Ellen Roels

Ellen Roels obtained her PhD in Robotics in 2023 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. During her doctoral research, supported by an FWO fellowship, she combined robotics and materials science to develop soft robotic systems based on self-healing polymers. Her work focused on the design of soft, self-healing sensors and the refinement of processing methods for these self-healing materials.

Following her PhD, Ellen was awarded an FWO postdoctoral fellowship to pursue research on metafluids in a collaborative project between VUB and KU Leuven. In this project, she applied her expertise in soft materials and robotics to develop adaptive metamaterials.

Since October 2025, Ellen is appointed as an Assistant Professor in the department MeMC, where she is actively developing a research programme around the mechanical design and characterisation of adaptive and reconfigurable material structures.

In addition to her academic research, Ellen is actively involved in science communication. Notably, she co-organised a workshop at the Nerdland Festival 2023 that resulted in a Guinness World Record for the longest robot chain, and in 2024 she received the KVAB Science Communication Award for her contributions to public engagement.