Ed Habtour

Assistant Professor
Aeronautics & Astronautics

Pronouns: he/him

habtour@uw.edu |
GUG 316E
Faculty Website
The Illimited Lab

Biography

Ed Habtour is an assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics. Ed is the founder of The illimited Lab at the University of Washington. His research focuses on studying innate nonlinear interactions observed in fractals and segmented structures seen in nature. The overarching goal is to engineer nature-inspired structures with distributive control and novel dynamics for applications in aerospace, robotics, energy, and medicine. He held technical positions at Swales Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, US Army Materiel System Activity Analysis, US Army Research Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. He was a visiting scientist at Universiteit Twente, and The Netherlands Defence Academy. Ed is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnostics & Prognostics, and has served on many international committees and panels. He received several awards for his technical accomplishments, including the US Dept. of the Army Commander’s Medal and Achievement Award, Science Award, and IEEE Evans/P.K. McElroy Award.

Education

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, 2015
M.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, 2014
M.E. Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2006
M.S. Computational Engineering, Purdue University, 2011
B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Utah State University, 2004

Research Statement

The goal of The illimited LAB is to reveal the elegant physics of form, function, and motion found in nature. To apply that physics to design outlandish biomimetic systems that transcend classical mechanics. To draw inspiration from biology to provide sustainable and adaptable solutions that are material, energy, and sensing efficient.

Current projects

Sunflower Biomimicry for Optimal Acoustic Absorption, Support by National Science Foundation

Noise and Drag Reduction in Airfram Using Helmholtz Resonators, Support by JCATI and Boeing

Harnessing the Dynamic Functions of Irregular Structural Patterns, Inspired by Stingray, Support by National Science Foundation

RazorBot, Suport by NAVSEA

Sensing without Sensors via Spiderweb-llike Structural Network, Start up

Select publications

Boom, Bart, et al. (2025). Tuning body shape and stiffness to reduce water slamming forces. Ocean Engineering 339 (2025): 121655.
Masmeijer, T. et al. (2025). Directional DIC method with automatic feature selection. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 224, 112080.
Masmeijer, T. C. P. et al. (2024). Effect of eccentricity on sensing in spider web inspired cable nets. In Journal of Physics (Vol. 2647, No. 19).
Kuehne, L. M. et al. (2024). Technology-forcing to reduce environmental noise pollution: a prospectus. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 35(1), 6-15.
Boom, B. et al. (2023). Water entry dynamics of avian inspired divers. In Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (Vol. 87523). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Montoya, A. et al. (2022). Detecting Hidden Transient Events in Noisy Nonlinear Time-series. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science 32 (7), 073131.
Wiersinga, P. et al. (2022). Hybrid compliant musculoskeletal system for fast actuation in robots. Micromachines, 13(10), 1783.
Habtour, Ed, et al. (2022). Highly Sensitive Nonlinear Identification to Track Early Fatigue Signs in Flexible Structures. Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems 5.2.