Dr Antonio Forte

Biography

Dr Antonio Elia Forte is a Lecturer at King's Department of Engineering. 

Antonio obtained his MSc in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Salento (Italy) and completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London in 2015, studying the mechanics of the human brain during neurosurgery. He also developed novel hydrogels that mimic the mechanical behaviour of soft tissues, 3D printing cryo-techniques for super-soft materials and finite element models of human organs and joints.

Afterwards, he carried out a postdoc in the Biophysics of Hearing and Neural Information Processing group at Imperial College London's Department of Bioengineering, where he investigated how the human brain processes sounds (in particular natural, continuous speech) and the subcortical mechanisms behind selective attention in noisy environments. To achieve this, he used empirical mode decomposition, signal processing and machine learning techniques, and experimental EEG and Auditory Brainstem Recordings.

In 2018 he moved to Harvard University with a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, where he spent years investigating origami, kirigami and soft metamaterials for robotic applications. He developed, modelled, and manufactured kirigami balloons with shape-morphing capabilities, multimodal origami actuators that use multistability to reconfigure, light-weight mechanical valves for onboard control of soft robots, amongst other things.

• Lecturer (Assistant Professor) – King’s College London (2021 – present)
• Research Fellow – John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University (2018 - 2021)
• Consultant (InBev) – Imperial College London Consultants (2018)
• Research Associate – Bioengineering Dept, Imperial College London (2016 - 2018)
• Consultant (Embody Orthopaedic) – Imperial College London Consultants (2015)
• Research Assistant – Mechanical Engineering Dept, Imperial College London (2015)
• PhD student – Mechanical Engineering Dept, Imperial College London (2011-2015)
• MSc in Mechanical Engineering – University of Salento (2009-2011)
• Masters in Wireless Smart Systems – University of Salento (2009)
• BSc in Mechanical Engineering – University of Salento (2005- 2008)

Research interests

• Neural signal processing
• Finite Element modelling
• Soft Matter mechanics
• Design of tissue-mimicking polymers and hydrogels
• Mechanical metamaterials and architected materials for robotic application

Further information

• Research profile
• Personal website
• Google scholar