Miguel Bessa is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Brown University, where he develops methods in artificial intelligence and computational mechanics to solve frontier engineering problems. His contributions include being one of the earliest to introduce data-driven methods in computational mechanics, the co-development of self-consistent clustering analysis (SCA), uncertainty-aware design with new Bayesian methods, and the foundations of neural topology optimization — with applications spanning supercompressible metamaterials, nanomechanical resonators with quality factors above one billion at room temperature, lightsails for interstellar propulsion, and sustainable polymer composite design. Bessa received a PhD from Northwestern University (2016) as a Fulbright scholar, held a postdoctoral position at Caltech (2017), and was Assistant and then Associate Professor at TU Delft before joining Brown in 2022. His group is a strong proponent of open-source software (github.com/bessagroup).
