Renate Sachse awarded Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg fellowship

Stuttgart – Renate Sachse, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, has been accepted as a fellow in the Max Planck Society’s Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg. It promotes the careers of female scientists after their postdoctoral studies and supports them in obtaining a professorship or a leadership position at a research institution. The program also supports activities that help fellows establish themselves in the scientific community and provides a platform for interdisciplinary scientific exchange. It offers a range of benefits, including mentoring, and networking, to help fellows establish themselves as leaders in their fields. At MPI-IS, there are already two female researchers who are fellows of the Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg: Celestine Mendler-Dünner and Buse Aktaş.

Renate Sachse leads the “Mechanics for Intelligent Structures” group. The civil engineer and her team develop simulation models for soft and flexible structures, such as those found in soft robotics. The goal is to better predict and precisely control the movements and deformations of such systems. In doing so, the research group investigates how mechanical properties can be programmed through geometry, materials, and actuation concepts. A particular focus is on bio-inspired and soft robotic systems that can interact safely with humans and perform complex movements—especially with a view to future applications in medicine.

Renate Sachse was a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Munich and completed a research fellowship at the Bertoldi Lab at Harvard University. She earned her Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Stuttgart in 2020, combining computational mechanics with biomimetic design principles to focus on the development of soft robots and compliant mechanisms.

Her work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the 2022 Bertha Benz Prize, the Dr. Wilhelmy VDI Prize, and the Klaus Tschira Boost Fund Fellowship.