Bio

Manan Arya leads the Morphing Space Structures Lab. His research is on shape-changing structures, including spacecraft structures that are folded for launch and then unfolded in space, and also morphing robots. Previously, he was a technologist in the Advanced Deployable Structures Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managed for NASA by Caltech.

Academic Appointments

Program Affiliations

  • Stanford SystemX Alliance

Professional Education

  • PhD, California Institute of Technology (2016)
  • Masters, California Institute of Technology (2012)
  • BASc in Engineering Science, University of Toronto (2011)

Contact

  • Academic
    manan.arya@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: Aeronautics and Astronautics Position: Asst Professor

Additional Info

Links

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Manan Arya leads the Morphing Space Structures Laboratory. His research is on structures that can adapt their shape to respond to changing requirements. Examples include deployable structures for spacecraft that can stow in constrained volumes for launch and then unfold to larger sizes in space, terrestrial structures with variable geometry, and morphing robots. Key research thrusts include lightweight fiber-reinforced composite materials to enable innovative designs for flexible structures, and the algorithmic generation of the geometry of morphing structures – the arrangement of stiff and compliant elements – to enable novel folding mechanisms.

He has published more than 20 journal and conference papers and has been awarded 5 US patents. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a Technologist at the Advanced Deployable Structures Laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where he developed and tested breakthrough designs for space structures, including deployable reflectarrays, starshades, and solar arrays.

2023-24 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • NASA's starshade technology development activity Willems, P. A., Shaklan, S., Hu, R., Martin, S., Lisman, D., Ferraro, S., Stegman, M., Harness, A. D., Freebury, G., Arya, M., Coyle, L. E., Matsuura, S., Perrin, M. D. SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING. 2022

    View details for DOI 10.1117/12.2635326

    View details for Web of Science ID 000865466600072

  • Crease-free biaxial packaging of thick membranes with slipping folds INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOLIDS AND STRUCTURES Arya, M., Lee, N., Pellegrino, S. 2017; 108: 24-39

    View details for DOI 10.1016/j.ijsolstr.2016.08.013

    View details for Web of Science ID 000394082000003

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3522-6010