Our research is focused on applying the tools and techniques of Solid Mechanics to understand the deformation and failure of engineering, biological materials and structures. We study structure-property connections - how small-scale structure in materials gives rise to effective properties at the large-scale. We have investigated structure-property and structure-phenomenon connections in a number of engineering and biological systems. For example, we have used tools from the field of applied and computational mechanics to understand how sub-micrometer scale architecture in structural biological materials affects their deformation and failure behavior... The stiction failure phenomenon in Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices is a critical impediment to their full commercialization. In order to avoid such failure, the ability to quantify the work of adhesion of adhered microbeam is required. Previous research applies interferometric techniques to measure the beam's unadhered..