Larissa Novelino is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice. She obtained her M.S. degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 2015 and her Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2021, both in Civil Engineering.

Fascinated by the potential of origami, Larissa Novelino situates her research at the unique intersection of art and engineering. She sees origami as not just an art form, but as a tool to create structures with shape-changing capabilities and materials with adaptable and unique mechanical properties. Novelino’s research has two primary focuses:

(1) Utilizing Origami to develop compact, easily deployable structures that can drastically change shape—empowering innovative applications for emergency structures and space exploration.

(2) Utilizing origami to tailor mechanical properties, including negative or switchable Poisson's ratio, anisotropy, shape recoverability, high stiffness-to-weight ratio, and stiffness tunability.

Driven by the practical applications of origami in engineering, Novelino’s work is oriented toward creating deployable, tunable, and multifunctional systems.