Varda Hagh

Varda Hagh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), holding this position since 2024. She earned her Ph.D. in Physics from Arizona State University (2018) and a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Tehran (2011). Her research focuses on the mechanics of disordered materials, including control in mechanical metamaterials, training soft/biological matter, reconfigurable structures, and memory formation in materials. She co-developed rigidPy, a Python library for rigidity analysis of mechanical networks, published in Computer Physics Communications (2022).

Her work bridges theoretical, computational, and experimental approaches to explore material fundamentals, emphasizing how disordered systems store mechanical memory and exhibit learning-like behaviors. Key contributions include studies on energy-dynamics competition in memory formation, transient degrees of freedom in materials, and energetic rigidity theory. She teaches TAM 251 (Introductory Solid Mechanics) and TAM 451 (Intermediate Solid Mechanics). Active in service, she chairs UIUC’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (2024–present).