Josephine Carstensen is an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. She leads the top+ad group, an interdisciplinary engineering lab that focuses on developing new methods and algorithms that improves structural design.

The digitalization of manufacturing is radically changing how we fabricate and construct structures. Today we can make things that were too complex for manufacture just a few years ago. To fully leverage the new manufacturing possibilities and create structures that are lighter, safer, or more sustainable, we need to re-think our approach to structural design. The top+ad lab works with developing structural- and topology optimization frameworks that improves design. This includes the development of algorithms that tailor design to new manufacturing considerations and research that fabricate optimized structures to experimentally investigate their behavior. The lab works with improving the design of structures of all sizes such as high-rise buildings, parts or components of a larger structure or the architecture of a porous material.

Josephine has received several awards including the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and the CEE Masheeh Excellence in Teaching Award. She earned a PhD and a MSE from Johns Hopkins University and holds a MSc and BSc from the Technical University of Denmark.