Alexander Landauer (Fed)

Alex Landauer (he/him; ORCID: 0000-0003-2863-039X) is an experimental solid mechanician in the Security Technologies Group. Alex specializes in full-field measurements in mechanics across domains including soft materials, impact protection, 3D printing, semiconductors and cell mechanobiology. Methods include commercial off-the-shelf and custom instruments such as universal testing systems, dynamic mechanical analysis, drop tower impact, and optical imaging systems. Full-field measurement strategies focus on 2D, surface-3D and volumetric digital image correlation (DIC/DVC), particle image velocimetry and single particle tracking (PIV and PTV/SPT), in addition to other image analysis modalities. These enable advanced technique such as light field microscopy (LFM) and traction force microscopy (TFM) measurements, computational methods including finite element model updating (FEMU) and constitutive model fitting routines, and provide key data and diagnostics for material characterization.

Overall, Alex's experimental and computational capabilities build toward an experimental mechanics program that incorporates sophisticated force application and imaging, deformation reconstruction, inverse property identification, machine learning (ML) and constitutive modeling techniques for material measurement and characterization. His interests involve developing experimental systems and techniques to explore and model materials, structure-property relationships, and understand uncertainty and error sources. Alex's collaborative approach and commitment to open software and data strives to help material and physical scientists, biomedical engineers, materials manufacturers, and protective equipment developers understand and design highly performant systems.

Warning: Alex's twin brother Orion Kafka is also a research engineer in MML at the Boulder site and confusion is possible. 

Research Interests

• Non-contact deformation tracking (DIC/DVC/PIV, PTV and SPT) and uncertainty quantification
• Material modeling for soft, elastomeric and porous materials, including hierarchical and lattice-like engineered materials
• Mechanical measurements with advanced optics for biological systems and in situ experiments (LFM and TFM)  
• Combining experimental techniques and computation (FEMU, virtual fields methods, ML for material science)
• Material systems for impact protection and mitigation strategies

Projects

• Accurate Cure Kinetics, Stress, Mechanical Properties and Warpage: Focusing on DIC for cure shrinkage and wafer- or package-level warpage measurements in a CHIPS funded project (collaboration with MSED and BBD)
• Impact mitigating materials: Developing measurement techniques and exploring material response for impact-like loading scenarios using tools include an instrumented drop tower and servo-hydraulic load frame with high-speed cameras and Digital Image Correlation (DIC), dynamic mechanical analysis, and micro-computed tomography (with ACMD collaborators Newell Moser and Orion Kafka)
  • Impact protection foam materials properties datafrawork and database
  • Evaluating the effect of radiation dosage for in-situ deformation imaging with micro-computed tomography
  • Constitutive modeling and localization analysis for viscoelastic foams
• Material characterization to support the development of polymer additively manufactured sheet metal press brake forms (with Jon Seppala and Mark Iadicola from MSED, and Aaron Forster)
• Full-field uncertainty estimation for 2D-DIC using deep learning
• Drop tower based experimental design for material characterization (with Ran Tao and Michael Riley)

Recent Conference Presentations

• Landauer A.K ., Seppala J.E., Foster, A.M., "Material properties measurements of stereolithographic glass-filled polymer prints for forming tool prototypes", ASTM International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing. Nov, 2023.
• Landauer A.K. "Dataset Generation for Digital Image/Volume Correlation and Particle Tracking: Applications to Machine Learning-Based Techniques", Society of Engineering Science Annual Conference. Oct, 2023.
• Landauer A.K. "Spatially Resolved Measurement Uncertainty Estimation for 2D-DIC via Machine Learning", International Digital Image Correlation Society Annual Meeting. Nov. 2022.  

• NIST MML Early Career Researcher "Accolade" (Material Measurement Laboratory, 2023).
• SEM Hetenyi Best Paper in 2022 Award (Experimental Mechanics, 2023) 
• NIST NRC Postdoctoral Research Associateship (National Research Council, Awardee, 2019)
• International Student Paper Competition (Society of Experimental Mechanics, Finalist, 2018)
• Graduate Research Fellowship (National Science Foundation, Program Fellow, 2015-2020)
• James R Rice Graduate Fellowship in Solid Mechanics (Brown University, 2014-2015)