Buse Aktaş

Buse Aktaş is a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, where she leads the Robotic Composites and Compositions (RoCoCo) Group. Her interdisciplinary background bridges mechanical engineering, visual arts, and design, with professional experience in home appliances industry and traditional crafts apprenticeships.

Her research focuses on active composite metamaterials with tunable mechanical properties for robotics applications. Key areas include:

• Development of jamming-based functional metamaterials
• Minimally-invasive surgical robotics
• Sustainable circular manufacturing systems
• Human-material interaction interfaces
• Soft and underactuated robotics

Her publication record demonstrates expertise in mechanical modeling of jamming structures, with applications spanning robotic manipulators, medical devices, and interactive art installations. Research methodologies combine experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches across multiple scales.

Awards and recognitions include:

• ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg membership
• Multiple awards for academic innovation
• Teaching excellence honors
• Transdisciplinary research accolades

Aktaş actively contributes to engineering education through classroom-based research on active learning, instructor mentoring with equity focus at Harvard's Bok Center, and lecturing on Mechanics of Materials. Her lab culture emphasizes safety, inclusivity, transparency, and collaboration while addressing historical discriminatory practices in engineering.

The RoCoCo group pursues transdisciplinary collaborations with artists, artisans, clinicians, architects, and environmental scientists to expand research perspectives and accessibility through tangible multimedia installations and interactive data visualizations.