| Ellen Kuhl | |
| Birth Place: | Hanover, Germany |
| Known For: | Living Matter Physics |
| Walter B. Reinhold Professor in the School of Engineering and Robert Bosch Chair of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University | |
| Awards: | Humboldt Research Award (2016); ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award (2021) |
| Website: | , |
| Alma Mater: | Technical University of Kaiserslautern (habil.); University of Stuttgart (Ph.D.); Leibniz University of Hanover (Dipl.-Ing.) |
Ellen Kuhl is the Walter B. Reinhold Professor in the School of Engineering and Robert Bosch Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, Bioengineering. Kuhl is known for her research on Living Matter Physics, the design of theoretical and computational models to simulate and predict the behavior of living systems including the human brain and the living heart.
Kuhl grew up in Germany, and now lives in Palo Alto, California. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in computational engineering from the Leibniz University of Hanover in 1993 and 1995, her Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Stuttgart in 2000, and her habilitation in mechanics from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in 2004. She was appointed as assistant professor at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in 2002, and joined the department of mechanical engineering at Stanford University in 2007. In 2011, she accepted a position at ETH Zurich, but returned to Stanford in 2012. She was promoted to full professor in 2016, and named the Walter B. Reinhold Professor in 2021. Since 2019, Kuhl has been the department chair of mechanical engineering.
Kuhl's research integrates physics-based modeling with machine learning and creates interactive simulation tools to understand, explore, and predict the dynamics of living systems.She has pioneered theories and algorithms for the growth of living systems,and applies these theories to brain development, brain damage, neurodegeneration, Alzheimer's disease, tissue expansion, heart failure, dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.During the COVID-19 pandemic, her lab was among the first to use data-driven modeling to integrate classical epidemiology modeling and machine learning to infer critical disease parameters, in real time, from reported data to make informed predictions and guide political decision making. This work gained recognition during a legal challenge of the Newfoundland travel ban and in a study of superspreading events on college campuses.
Kuhl is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She received the National Science Foundation Career Award in 2010, was selected as Midwest Mechanics Seminar Speaker in 2014, and received the Humboldt Research Award in 2016 and the ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award in 2021.
Kuhl is an All American triathlete. She ran the New York City Marathon in 2009, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, the Zurich Marathon in 2011, the San Francisco Marathon in 2013, the Chicago Marathon in 2017, and the Boston Marathon annually since 2018. She competed in three Ironmans and ten 70.3s, including the 2019, 2022, 2023 Ironman World Championship in Kona and the 2021 Ironman 70.3 World Championship and Ironman World Championship in St. George.