Mario Frakulla

Drexel faculty mentors: Ahmad Najafi, Jörn Venderbos

Mario has been involved in undergraduate research for multiple academic terms through the Hess Honors Scholars research program in the department of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics. During his research in Dr. Ahmad Najafi’s lab he studied fiber-reinforced composite materials and microstructural toughening mechanisms in human cortical bone. HIs focus was to use Deep Learning to build a Semantic Segmentation network that would perform classification of cortical bone images and extract information needed for the FE analysis. Based on this experience he was awarded a scholarship to pursue research on the optimization of fiber-reinforced polymer structures at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

His research interests have recently changed and in his third co-op he will be focusing on a quantum condensed matter physics project in Dr. Jörn Venderbos lab. After graduating he plans to pursue a PhD in a field that combines his interests in Engineering and Physics.