Amira Abdel-Rahman

MIT Center for Bits and Atoms

I'm a PhD student in MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

My research is at the intersection of computational fabrication and computer graphics. I create inverse design workflows to design and build discrete metamaterial (Digital Material) and reconfigurable robotic swarms. I develop scalable integrated tools to design, simulate, optimize, fabricate and control these systems.

Portfolio

• Personal Portfolio
• Rapid-Prototyping of Rapid-Prototyping Machines
• How to make (almost) anything

Publications

• - Miana Smith, Jack Forman, Amira Abdel-Rahman, and Neil Gershenfeld. "Voxel Invention Kit: Reconfigurable building blocks for prototyping interactive electronic structures". CHI 2025. Accepted.
• - Miana Smith, Amira Abdel-Rahman, and Neil Gershenfeld. "Self-Reconfigurable Robots for Collaborative Discrete Lattice Assembly". ICRA 2024. Link.
• - Faraz Faruqi, Ahmed Katary, Tarik Hasic, Amira Abdel-Rahman, Nayeemur Rahman, Leandra Tejedor, Mackenzie Leake, Megan Hofmann and Stefanie Mueller. "Style2Fab: Functionality-Aware Segmentation for Fabricating Personalized 3D Models with Generative AI". UIST 2023. (pp. 1-13). Link.
• - Alfonso Parra Rubio, Dixia Fan, Benjamin Jenett, José del Águila Ferrandis,Filippos Tourlomousis, Amira Abdel-Rahman, David Preiss, Michael Triantafyllou and Neil Gershenfeld. "Modular Morphing Lattices for Large Scale Underwater Continuum Robotic Structures" Soft Robotics Journal, 2023. Link.
• - Amira Abdel-Rahman, Christopher Cameron, Benjamin Jenett, Miana Smith, and Neil Gershenfeld, "Self-Replicating Hierarchical Modular Robotic Swarms" In Nature Communications Engineering, 2022. Link.
• - Zach Fredin, Jiri Zemanek, Camron Blackburn, Erik Strand, Amira Abdel-Rahman, Premila Rowles, and Neil Gershenfeld, "Discrete Integrated Circuit Electronics (DICE)" In IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference, 2020. Link.
• - Amira Abdel-Rahman, Aaron T. Becker, Daniel E. Biediger, Kenneth C. Cheung, Sándor P. Fekete, Neil A. Gershenfeld, Sabrina Hugo et al. "Space ants: constructing and reconfiguring large-scale structures with finite automata." In Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG), p. 73. 2020. Link.
• - Eike Niehs, Arne Schmidt, Christian Scheffer, Daniel E. Biediger, Michael Yannuzzi, Benjamin Jenett, Amira Abdel-Rahman, Kenneth C. Cheung, Aaron T. Becker, and Sándor P. Fekete. "Recognition and reconfiguration of lattice-based cellular structures by simple robots." In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). 2020. Link.
• - Benjamin Jenett, Amira Abdel-Rahman, Kenneth Cheung, and Neil Gershenfeld. "Material-robot system for assembly of discrete cellular structures". In Robotics and Automation Letters. IEEE, 2019. Link.
• - Amira Abdel-Rahman, Marcin Kosicki, Panagiotis Michalatos, and Martha Tsigkari. "Design of thermally deformable laminates using machine learning". In SEMC (Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation) 2019 . Elsevier, 2019. Link.
• - Allan Costa, Amira Abdel-Rahman, Benjamin Jenett, Neil Gershenfeld, Irina Kostitsyna, and Kenneth Cheung. "Algorithmic approaches to reconfigurable assembly systems". In 2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference, pages 1–8. IEEE, 2019. Link.
• - Sara Falcone, John Zhang, Agnes Cameron, and Amira Abdel-Rahman. "Blockchain Design for an Embedded System." Ledger 4, 2019. Link.
• - Amira Abdel-Rahman and Panagiotis Michalatos. Magnetic Morphing. In the 37th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), pages 18–27, 2017. Link.
• - Amira Abdel-Rahman, "Shape Morphing : Swarm Magnetics". Master's thesis, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2017. Link.
• - Amira Abdel-Rahman and Elnaz Tafrihi. "Heat-actuated auxetic facades". In Facade Tectonics 2018, pages 449–459, 2018. Link.
• - Ayman Wagdy, Sarah Mokhtar, and Amira Abdel-Rahman. "Parametric analysis of solar shading parameters in intermediate orientations located in desert climates". In Building Simulation Conference 2016 , 2016. Link.

Contact

• amira.abdel-rahman[at]cba[dot]mit[dot]edu