Flavia Palmeri

Postdoctoral Researcher

fpalmeri@caltech.edu

Flavia Palmeri joined the Space Structures Lab in March 2025. Her postdoctoral research focuses on deployable booms, deployment mechanisms, and their integration in large space structures.

She earned her Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering and her Master's degree in Space and Astronautical Engineering, specializing in satellite systems, both with honors, from Sapienza University of Rome. She then completed a Ph.D. there, developing design strategies for deployable booms 

She held an Italian Space Agency–funded research fellowship on the Heliantus Solar Sail Project, working on the structural subsystem of the sailcraft for a geostorm early warning mission. She also held an Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics–funded fellowship, contributing to the installation planning of the Enfourneur for handling Electromagnetic Calorimeter SuperModules in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN.

Publications: 

• Palmeri, Flavia, and Susanna Laurenzi. "A multi-objective optimization approach to design bistable collapsible tubular mast." Composite Structures 351 (2025): 118593.

• Palmeri, Flavia, and Susanna Laurenzi. "Neural network-based surrogate modeling for buckling performance optimization of lightweight-composite collapsible tubular masts." Biomimetics 9.8 (2024): 494.

• Palmeri, Flavia, Susanna Laurenzi, and Sergio Pellegrino. "Root boundary conditions for omega deployable booms." AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum. 2024.