Luís Pereira is a MSc in Aerospace Engineering student in Instituto Superior Técnico, currently developing his Master Thesis, supervised by Prof. Sofia Teixeira de Freitas.

The work developed on this Thesis relates to the integration of bio-inspired 3D printed reinforcement structures into a biobased polyurethane resin, with the purpose of increasing the resin’s mechanical properties. The printed structures are called overlapping curls and resemble the molecular structure of spider silk, having the purpose of, through their curled properties, unfolding and in this process release energy related to the mechanical loading of the material.