Professor S.D. Guest

Introduction

Simon Guest is Professor of Structural Mechanics, in the Structures Group of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. His teaching is in structural mechanics, and his research straddles the border between traditional structural mechanics, and the study of mechanisms. He is also a fellow of Trinity Hall.

Book

See Symmetry and Tensegrity for details of my book with Bob Connelly.

Research

My research straddles the border between traditional structural mechanics, and the study of mechanisms; this academic area turns out to encompass many interesting technologies and provide many exciting and challenging problems. Much of my work is with the Advanced Structures Group.

The following pages describe my work in a number of areas:

• Morphing lattice structures
  Morphing structures can change their shape to respond to or alter their environment. Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in using lattice structures as the microstructure of a new class of morphing materials.
• Biological structures
  Many biological systems can be both structures and mechanisms; I've looked at the cytoskeleton, the scaffolding of cells, some aspects of the shape of proteins, the structure of some viruses, and the use of biomimetics to generate novel structures.
• Symmetry
  Structures and mechanisms that are symmetric often have interesting properties that depend on their symmetries.
• Bistable structures
  I have looked at a particular class of bistable structure, split tubes with essentially the same geometry as a carpenter's tape. These tubes can be made bistable, either by altering the bending stiffnesses of the structure so that it is no longer isotropic, or by setting up an initial prestress in the structure.
• Deployable Structures
  Deployable Structures are structures which can be reduced in size for transportation or storage, and then automatically deployed. Most commonly, these structures are used in space.

Teaching

This year I am teaching second and third year courses on Structural Mechanics.

Publications

Contact Information

• E-mail: sdg@eng.cam.ac.uk
• Department Address: University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ

Calendar

Last updated on the 16th of October, 2025