Dr Jack Binysh

• Marie Curie Fellow, University of Amsterdam
• PhD in Mathematics of Systems, University of Warwick
• MPhys in Physics, First Class, University of Oxford

Dr Jack Binysh is an engineer and applied physicist working on robotic metamaterials for autonomous motion and smart robot bodies. His research combines mechatronic fabrication and prototyping with advances in continuum modelling, coarse-graining procedures and reduced-order simulations. To learn more about his work, check out the Binysh Lab website.

Jack joined University of Birmingham as an Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering in June 2026. Before that he was a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bath.

Jack’s work has appeared in journals such as Nature, PNAS, Nature Photonics, Science Advances, Physical Review X & Physical Review Letters, alongside invited talks at international conferences, and prizes including Bath’s Peter Troughton prize for university-wide postdoctoral excellence.

• MEng/BEng Final Year Projects, Engineering – interested students are encouraged to reach out
• MSc Robotics Final Year Projects, Engineering

Current Students
For current positions, look at binyshlab.com, or contact Dr. Binysh directly as early as possible.

Past Students (Birmingham)
Xiangyao Guo, Shuqin Wang: Final Year MSc Robotics students.

Past Students (Amsterdam)
Tim Iking, Emma van de Spek, Sujan Kumar, Felix Kuyken, Vito Seinen: Final Year MSc Physics students

Robotic functionality without central control

Robotics promises to improve our lives by automating repetitive, delicate and dangerous tasks. Yet robots still struggle with unpredictable terrain and rely on heavy computational resources. Contrast all this with simple organisms that can locomote happily without a brain, without even neurons.

Jack is interested in developing unconventional robot bodies and control schemes, which use collective phenomena like synchronization or mechanical instabilities to achieve functionality without central control. An engineer might call this approach to robotic design embodied intelligence, physical intelligence, or swarm robotics. A physicist might view the same approach as exploiting statistical physics and emergent phenomena.

Jack’s recent work has focused on ‘non-reciprocal’ interactions between actuators distributed in a mechanical matrix [1,2]. By locally breaking effective symmetries of action and reaction, these materials host spontaneously amplified one-way waves, which power locomotion. In other words, you can make wheels that roll by themselves.

Example Publications:

[1] Veenstra, J., Scheibner, C., Brandenbourger, M., Binysh, J., Souslov, A., Vitelli, V., & Coulais, C. (2025). Adaptive locomotion of active solids. Nature, 639(8056), 935–941. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08646-3

[2] Al-Izzi, S. C., Du, Y., Veenstra, J., Morris, R. G., Souslov, A., Carlson, A., Coulais, C., & Binysh, J. (2026). Nonreciprocal buckling makes active filaments polyfunctional. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 123(11), e2531723123. doi:10.1073/pnas.2531723123

Mechanical metamaterials and active matter

As well as using collective effects for robotics, Jack is also interested in understanding the properties of materials made of robots or other energy-consuming elements. This field is called active matter.

For example, a mechanical lattice built of robots whose interactions break reciprocity has special elastic moduli–so-called “odd” moduli–which are classically forbidden. Jack’s work has explicitly measured these moduli in mechatronic lattices [1]. Odd-elastic moduli can power self-sustained collective oscillations which are remarkably robust to noise and damage, a state of oscillating matter that physicists called a time crystal [2].

Example Publications:

[1] Binysh, J., Baardink, G., Veenstra, J., Coulais, C., & Souslov, A. (2026). More is less in unpercolated active solids. Physical Review X, 16(2), 021012. doi:10.1103/flhb-kjyd

[2] Veenstra, J., Binysh, J., Seinen, V., Naber, R., Robledo-Poisson, D., Hunt, A., van Saarloos, W., Souslov, A., & Coulais, C. (2025). Wave coarsening drives time crystallization in active solids. arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.20052. arXiv:2508.20052

Topological mechanics as a design tool

An example of a topological structure is the whorl of hair on our heads or the central swirl of our fingerprints. They are global patterns that persist under local changes (e.g. combing your hair). Such motifs occur across materials e.g. as defects in crystals or liquid crystals. As well as directly existing within the real microstructure of materials, topological structures also exist abstractly in the band structure of lattice vibrations, where they underpin so-called topologically protected edge states.

Jack has worked on using such topological structures to tailor the mechanical [1] or optical [2] responses of liquid crystals and optical fibre. One current interest is in combining topology with self-actuation to build new types of robot.

Example Publications:

[1] Binysh, J., Kos, Ž., Čopar, S., Ravnik, M., & Alexander, G. P. (2020). Three-dimensional active defect loops. Physical Review Letters, 124(8), 088001. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.088001

[2] Roberts, N., Salter, B., Binysh, J., Mosley, P. J., & Souslov, A. (2026). Twisted optical fibres as photonic topological insulators. Nature Photonics, 20(3), 324–331. doi:10.1038/s41566-026-01848-9