When Larissa Novelino started her career as an engineer, she never expected that paper folding would become the center of her work.
Growing up in Belém, Brazil, she was always strong in math, but she didn’t think of herself as artistic or crafty.
“My mom still can’t believe I ended up working with origami,” she says with a laugh.
Now, as an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, Novelino uses origami—the ancient Japanese art of paper folding—not to make cranes or swans, but to change the way we design buildings, machines, and materials.
Origami engineering takes the geometry of folds and applies it to real-world problems. By folding structures in clever ways, engineers can create designs that are compact when stored but strong and useful when unfolded.
Novelino is exploring how this approach could lead to portable emergency shelters, lightweight materials with unusual properties, and even safer construction practices.
“Through geometry, you can design how a material behaves—its stiffness, its weight, even how it reacts in different directions,” she explains. “You can make something flexible in one situation, then stiff and load-bearing in another.”
One of her biggest goals is to make construction safer. Building sites are among the most dangerous workplaces, and Novelino believes origami-inspired designs could reduce those risks.
Imagine large structures that can be transported flat and then unfolded into place, reducing the need for risky on-site assembly. “This isn’t innovation just for novelty,” she says. “It’s innovation that protects lives.”
Her ideas stretch far beyond construction. She has worked on origami-based electromagnetic filters that shift their function simply by changing shape, and on soft robots that fold and snap into new positions to perform different tasks. For her, origami provides a powerful and flexible design language.
“You can prototype with paper right in front of you, test the ideas with your hands, and then build them with advanced materials,” she says.
Her students at Rice quickly discover that her classroom isn’t all about solving equations on a screen. Folding paper becomes a way to truly understand geometry, mechanics, and design. “They’re always surprised how much folding a simple sheet of paper can teach them,” she says. “It makes abstract concepts tangible.”
Novelino’s own path into this unusual field happened almost by accident. While working on her master’s degree in structural engineering, she connected with a professor in the U.S. who was exploring origami-inspired structures. For her, this shift was eye-opening.
“It was such a nice break from the computer.
I could use laser cutters and 3D printers, and actually build things,” she recalls. “I’ve never been good at visualizing shapes in my head, but folding these patterns in my hands gave me a whole new way to understand the mechanics. It’s still math, but with this incredible extra layer.”
From Brazil to Texas, from math equations to folded paper, Novelino’s journey shows how creativity can appear in the most unexpected ways. For her, origami is more than art—it’s a tool to reshape the future of engineering.
