Biography
Dr. Fafalis has joined the Drexel faculty in 2020 after a postdoctoral fellowship in Mechanical Engineering with Professor Jeffrey Kysar at Columbia University. As a postdoctoral research scientist, Dr. Fafalis worked on a biomedical engineering project to design high precision micro-needles for the diagnosis and treatment of hearing loss disorders. Specifically, he worked on the mechanical characterization of the round window membrane tissue and its constitutive modeling. He also developed numerical models and computer simulations of the diffusion of therapeutic agents delivered by microneedles into the cochlea through the round window membrane. Dr. Fafalis completed his doctoral studies in Computational Mechanics under the supervision of Professor Jacob Fish at Columbia University in 2017. As part of that team, Dr. Fafalis pioneered a multiscale mathematical and computational model that predicts the behavior and performance of synthetic materials under extreme stress conditions.
Degrees / Education
- PhD, Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University, 2017
- MS, Automation Systems, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 2011
- MS, Computational Mechanics of Solids, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 2009
- MS, Technology Management, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 2008
- BA, Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, University of Patras, Greece, 2003
Research Areas
Research Interests
Mechanical engineering education, mathematical modeling of natural and synthetic materials, computational mechanics, biomedical engineering and biomechanics, computational medicine sports biomechanics, numerical and experimental modeling of controlled drug delivery, nanomaterials, machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) in mechanical engineering.
Select Publications
- Experimental characterization of round window membrane in guinea pig reveals correlations between fiber alignment and membrane curvature predicted to produce superior mechanical behavior under physiological loading; M. Arriaga, D. Arteaga, D. Fafalis, M. Yu, X. Wang, K. Kasza, K. Lalwani, Anil, and W. Kysar, Jeffrey; to appear in Acta Biomaterialia, (2020).
- Small molecule delivery across a perforated artificial membrane by thermoreversible hydrogel poloxamer 407; A. Santimetaneedol, Z. Wang, D. Arteaga, A. Aksit, C. Prevoteau, M. Yu, H. Chiang, D. Fafalis, A. Lalwani, and J. Kysar; Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, 182 (2019), p. 110300.
- Computational continua for linear elastic heterogeneous solids on unstruc- tured finite element meshes; D. Fafalis and J. Fish; International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 115 (2018), pp. 501–530.
- Dispersive computational continua, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering; V. Filonova, D. Fafalis, and J. Fish; 298 (2016), pp. 58–79.
- Computational aspects of dispersive computational continua for elastic heterogeneous media; D. Fafalis and J. Fish; Computational Mechanics, 56 (2015), pp. 931–946.
- Computational continua revisited; J. Fish, V. Filonova, and D. Fafalis; International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 102 (2015), pp. 332–378.
- On the capability of generalized continuum theories to capture dispersion characteristics at the atomic scale; D. Fafalis, S. Filopoulos, and G. Tsamasphyros; European Journal of Mechanics, A/Solids, 36 (2012), pp. 25–37.