First team members join the new Robotic Composites and Compositions Group

Stuttgart, 5 May 2025 - Buse Aktaş is expanding her team. Last week, two new students joined her newly founded Robotic Composites and Compositions Group: Kira Koch (Ph.D.) and Rohit Patil (Master’s Student). On February 1, 2025, Buse established the new group at the Stuttgart site of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

In addition, Buse will join the Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg as a fellow and scientific member. Through this program, the Max Planck Society promotes the careers of outstanding female scientists after their postdoc, helping them succeed on their way to an appointment as a tenured professor or as a director of a research institution. The Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg also provides a platform for transdisciplinary scientific exchange.

Buse's research focuses on developing active materials for robotic systems that move beyond structured environments such as factories, into complex, unpredictable spaces like cities, homes, and even the human body. To thrive in these settings, such systems must adapt mechanically and engage meaningfully with dynamic environments and human experiences.

In the Robotic Composites and Compositions Group – or RoCoCo – Buse and her team explore dynamic composite systems with tunable properties such as stiffness, elasticity and shape memory. Working across mechanics, robotics, materials science and design, Buse and her team will develop adaptive, reconfigurable systems that rethink how robots interact with people, objects and places.

"Our work aims to address challenges in minimally invasive surgery through adaptability, and in sustainable manufacturing through reconfigurability," says Buse Aktaş. "We are also exploring open questions about how material systems shape the way humans and machines perceive, experience and adapt to each other. Our research seeks to incorporate increasing material and structural intelligence into robotic systems to enable more responsive, sustainable and context-aware technologies."

Buse Aktaş is not only an engineer, but also an artist. She has an educational background in mechanical engineering, visual arts and design, work experience in the home appliances industry, and apprenticeships in several traditional crafts (e.g. broom making, locksmithing).