Dr Damian Palin

Research Interests

Damian's research interests lie at the intersection of construction materials development and biology. His research focuses on abstracting biological materials design principles for developing next-generation construction materials with high-performance mechanical and novel functional properties for more sustainable construction. Leveraging materials fabrication, characterisation, and modelling competencies, Damian's goal is to contribute to a deeper understanding of materials morphogenesis and structure-property relationships.

Strategic Themes

• Intelligent materials: self-healing and self-signalling materials 
• Bioinspired materials synthesis: fabrication and morphosynthesis of multifunctional hierarchical materials under mild conditions 
• Advanced materials fabrication, characterisation, and modelling 

Research Project

Digital Roads of the Future Initiative. The initiative is a University of Cambridge-industrial collaboration exploring how digital twins, smart materials, data science, and robotics can work together to develop a connected physical and digital road infrastructure system. Damian is a lead for the Smart Materials aspect of the initiative. 

Biography

Damian Palin is a Senior Research Associate (Research Assistant Professor) in the Digital Roads of the Future Initiative at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he received an Irish national research fellowship to work in Professor Daniel Kelly's Laboratory at Trinity College Dublin, leading a project developing nacre (or seashell)-inspired high-performance concrete (2021). Before that, he was a European Commission-funded Marie Curie Global Fellow in Professor Lara Estroff's group at Cornell University and Professor Henk Jonkers' group at the Delft University of Technology (TUD), leading a project synthesising biologically inspired material (2017-2020). In 2017, Dr Palin received his PhD from the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at TUD for work supervised by Professors Klass van Breugel and Henk Jonkers on the design and development of a smart, bacteria-based self-healing concrete. Damian has received several awards, including a James Dyson scholarship for academic achievement, and he gave a TED Talk on bacteria-induced mineral precipitation at TED Full Spectrum.