Assistant Professor Ousmane Kodio's, who will be joining the mechanical engineering faculty team in Fall 2023, article "Self-Ordering of Buckling, Bending, and Bumping Beams" was selected for the cover of Physics Review Letters (PRL). The work has also been featured in Physics, online magazine from the American Physical Society (APS), "How Order Emerges in Bendy Beam Bunches" and in nature materials, "Bending the Rules".

(a) An oyster mushroom that has been left in the open air to dry (approximately one day between consecutive pictures). During this drying process, the gills become compressed along their length, causing them to buckle (middle) and then align (right). (b) Experimental observations of a similar phenomenon in a system of slender parallel plates compressed in an Instron. (c) A numerical experiment of the same system.