Wilkins Aquino

Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Wilkins Aquino obtained a BSCE from Purdue University, and a MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the Duke Faculty, he was an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He was also a member of the fields of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Applied Mathematics at Cornell. Prof. Aquino has broad interests in computational mechanics, including finite element methods, computational inverse problems, uncertainty quantification, coupled chemo-mechanics, and computational acoustics, among others.

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
  • Professor in Head & Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences
  • Professor of Mathematics
  • Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Contact Information

Education

  • Ph.D. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2002

Research Interests

Computational mechanics, finite element methods, computational inverse problems and their applications in engineering and biomedicine, scientific computing, computational acoustics and acoustics-structure interaction, coupled chemo-mechanics (e.g., electrochemistry-mechanics).

Awards, Honors, and Distinctions

  • Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. National Science Foundation. 2012
  • Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. National Science Foundation. 2007

Courses Taught

  • ME 591: Research Independent Study in Mechanical Engineering or Material Science
  • ME 555: Advanced Topics in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 491: Special Projects in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 490: Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering
  • EGR 393: Research Projects in Engineering

Representative Publications

  • Chen, M. J., K. Sivakumar, G. A. Banyay, B. M. Golchert, T. F. Walsh, M. M. Zavlanos, and W. Aquino. “Sequential sensor placement for damage detection under frequency-domain dynamics.” Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 246 (April 1, 2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.finel.2025.104315.
  • Zhao, Yicheng, Zehra Parlak, Wenjun Yu, Daniel French, Wilkins Aquino, and Stefan Zauscher. “Microfluidic QCM enables ultrahigh Q-factor: a new paradigm for in-liquid gravimetric sensing.” Microsystems & Nanoengineering 10, no. 1 (August 2024): 116. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-024-00732-2.
  • Aquino, W., J. Desmond, M. Eldred, A. Kurzawski, C. McCormick, C. Sanders, C. Smith, and T. Walsh. “Assessing decision boundaries under uncertainty.” Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization 67, no. 7 (July 1, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-024-03832-9.
  • Aquino, Wilkins, Jerry Rouse, and Marc Bonnet. “Active design of diffuse acoustic fields in enclosures.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 155, no. 2 (February 2024): 1297–1307. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0024770.
  • Baek, Youngsoo, Wilkins Aquino, and Sayan Mukherjee. “Generalized Bayes approach to inverse problems with model misspecification.” Inverse Problems 39, no. 10 (October 2023): 105011. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6420/acf51c.