Buse Aktaş named to ASME’s 2026 Mechanical Engineering Watch List

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has named MPI-IS research group leader Buse Aktaş to its 2026 Mechanical Engineering Watch List. Launched in 2024, the annual Watch List spotlights early career professionals who have already left their marks on industry, academia, and society. Nominees were evaluated by the Mechanical Engineering editorial team based on their demonstrated impact, strong potential for advancement in their field, and engagement with the broader community advocating for the engineering profession. Buse Aktaş leads the Robotic Composites and Compositions group and works at the intersection of mechanics, robotics, materials, and design.

Buse Aktaş’s research focuses on developing composite material systems with actively tunable properties – such as stiffness, elasticity, and shape memory – to enable safe, adaptive, and versatile robot-environment and robot-human interactions. Programmable tunability is key for robots to perform complex tasks in unstructured, dynamic and delicate environments like our homes or our bodies. Aktaş’s group also aims to explore how these reconfigurable and adaptive systems can enable the circular reuse of robotic components, promoting sustainable design practices.

Buse Aktaş is an engineer and artist. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a Certificate in Visual Arts from Princeton University in the US, a Master of Arts in Design from Kadir Has University in Turkey, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering. Before joining MPI-IS, she was part of the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich as a recipient of the ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship, where she focused on developing on magnetically tunable composites.

About ASME

ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education, and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world. ASME recently formed the International Society of Interdisciplinary Engineers (ISIE) II & III LLC, a new for-profit subsidiary to house business ventures that will bring new and innovative products, services, and technologies to the engineering community. For more information, visit