Plenary Speakers

Professor Raj Das

Aerospace Engineering and Aviation School of Engineering, RMIT University
Melbourne, Australia

 ​​​​​"Virtual forensic laboratory - Developing bio-simulant human craniums for extreme injury assessment in bio-forensics"

 

Dr Raj Das leads the ‘Advanced Mechanics and Materials’ group in the Aerospace Engineering and Aviation discipline of the School of Engineering of RMIT University in Australia.  He is also an honorary academic in the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Dr Das is a principal investigator of the ‘Sir Lawrence Wackett Aerospace Research Centre’ of RMIT University, and also an adjunct academic of the University of Quebec, Canada. He serves as the Chair of the ‘National Committee on Applied Mechanics’ of Engineers Australia.

Dr Raj Das has more than 10 years of experience in design, analysis and optimisation of aerospace materials and structures with a focus on computational simulation, composite structures, failure analysis, and damage tolerance optimisation for civil and defence applications. Dr Das has a PhD from Monash University, Australia in Structural Optimisation and Failure Analysis. Dr Das has previously worked in the University of Auckland, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the University of Manchester.

Dr Das has published more than 200 papers in international journals and conferences in collaboration with several universities, institutes and industries. Dr Das has been granted several national and international awards and fellowships, including the ‘Jim & Hazel D. Lord Emerging Faculty Fellowship’, ‘Research Excellence Award’, and ‘AUEA Emerging Researcher Award’ by the University of Auckland. He has received the ‘CONICYT award’ from the Government of Chile, ‘Certificate of Merit Award’ from the International Association of Engineers, Hong Kong, ‘UQAC Visiting Fellowship’ from the University of Quebec, Canada, and ‘Visiting Researcher Fellowship’ from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

 

Professor Christian Hellmich

Institute for Mechanics of Materials and Structures, Vienna University of Technology
Vien, Austria

 "Thermodynamics and homogenisation theory as driving forces in the design of novel experiments and the (re-)evaluation of data"

 

Professor Christian Hellmich, Full Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), is the director of the Institute for Mechanics of Materials and Structures. At TU Wien, he received his engineering, PhD, and habilitation degrees (in 1995, 1999, and 2004, respectively). From 2000 to 2002, he was a Max Kade Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His work is strongly focussed on well-validated material and (micro)structural models, in terms of theoretical foundations and applications to concrete, soil, rock, wood, bone, and biomedical implants, up the structural level (tunnels, pipelines, bridges, biological organs such as the skeleton) - with complementary experimental activities if necessary. He has led several projects for the tunnel, railway, and pipeline industries, as well as international research activities sponsored by the European Commission, such as the mixed industryacademia consortium “BIO-CT-EXPLOIT” at the crossroads of numerical simulation and computer tomography, or the cross-domain COST action NAMABIO integrating engineers, physicists, (stem) cell biologists, and medical doctors across the European continent and beyond. He has published more than 130 papers in international refereed scientific journals in the fields of engineering mechanics, materials science, and theoretical biology, more than 25 book chapters, and more than 150 papers in refereed conference proceedings. Dr. Hellmich has served as the Chairman of both the Properties of Materials Committee of the Engineering Mechanics Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Poromechanics and Biomechanics Committees of the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI), as associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics (ASCE) and as co-editor in Chief of the Journal of Nanomechanics and Micromechanics (ASCE). As community service, he has (co-)chaired and/or supported more than 50 international conferences (including chairmanship of the 2013 Biot Conference on Poromechanics and the 2015 CONCREEP conference; both EMI-ASCE-supported), and he has reviewed for 128 different scientific journals and 15 science foundations.

His awards include the Kardinal Innitzer Science Award of the Archbishopry of Vienna in 2004 (for his habilitation thesis), the Science Award of the State of Lower Austria in 2005 (for his achievements in the micromechanics of hierarchical composites), the 2008 Zienkiewicz Award for Young Scientists in Computational Engineering Sciences, sponsored by the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS), the ERC Starting Grant of the European Research Council in 2010 (for the multiscale poromicromechanics of bone), the 2012 Walter L. Huber Research Prize of the ASCE, for his contributions to the microporomechanics of hierarchical geomaterials and biomaterials; and the 2017 Kajal Mallick Memorial Award of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK). He became Fellow of EMI in 2014; and Fellow of the European Alliance of Medical and Biological Engineering & Science (EAMBES) in 2018. In 2019, he was elected corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

 

 

Professor Małgorzata Kujawińska 

Photonics Engineering Division, Institute of Micromechanics and Photonics,
Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland 

 "Optical methods in experimental mechanics - Past, Present and Future   challenges"

 

Malgorzata Kujawinska PhD DSc., SPIE Fellow, Full Professor of applied optics at Warsaw  University of Technology, head of Photonics Engineering Division at Institute of Micromechanics   and Photonics. Expert in full-field optical metrology and 3D/4D imaging, hybrid opto-numerical   methods in mechanics, image processing, automatic data analysis for metrology and     multimedia, design of novel photonics measurement and display systems.

She has been involved in the optical metrology topics since 1980 including: development of interferometric,  holographic, grating interferometry, digital holography and holographic  tomography, digital   image correlation and structured light based methods. Recently she is involved in many national and international projects related to the applications ranging from measurements for experimental mechanics, material and optical engineering  through art objects and civil engineering structures monitoring, space applications and data content capture for multimedia (3D displays) and biomedicine at cellular level. Author of one monograph, several book chapters and more than 240 papers in highly ranked  scientific journals.

She had been the SPIE President in 2005, vice-President of ICO-the International Commission for Optics  and  the Vice-President of European Technology Platform Photonics 21 (2005-2016). She is the recipient of SPIE 2013 Chandra S. Vikram Award in Optical Metrology.

 

 

Professor Jianguo Lin

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, UK

“New challenges on developing experimental methods for innovative metal forming techniques”

 

He is a Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) and TATA Steel and Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair. Professor Lin's research expertise is in Materials and Process Modelling, Solid/Computational Mechanics, which includes micro-mechanics modelling, and its application in creep-damage, cyclic-plasticity-damage, viscoplasticity and advanced plasticity manufacturing technologies. He has published over 300 research papers in refereed international journals.

He joined Imperial College from the University of Birmingham in 2008 and established a Metal-forming and Materials Modelling Group at Imperial. The Group has an international reputation in developing new metal forming processes, multiscale materials and process modelling. He is a Founder Director of Impression Technologies Ltd and CurvEx Technology Ltd, both of which are Spin-offs of Imperial College are resulted from his patented techniques.       

 

 

Professor Błażej Skoczeń

Cracow University of Technology
Kraków, Poland

 "Plasticity, damage and fracture in the proximity of absolute zero. From experiment to constitutive models"

 

Professor Błażej Skoczeń (full professor since 2008). Born on December 26, 1960. During more than three decades of research work (since 1984) he worked at the Cracow University of Technology (CUT). In 1992 he became an intern at the Vienna University of Technology, and in 1993 he took an internship at the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan. In 1994, he took an EU founded internship at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, Geneva), and during the period 1998-2005 he became an associate and then full-time employee of CERN, where he headed one of the teams working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In 2006, he worked at the French Institute of Advanced Mechanics (Institut Français de Mécanique Avancée, IFMA) in Clermont-Ferrand as visiting professor.

Professor Skoczeń is heading since 2007 the Centre for Particle Accelerators Design at the Cracow University of Technology, and in 2009 he became head of the Institute of Applied Mechanics at CUT. In 2010, he obtained the position of full professor, and in 2012 he became member of the Senate of CUT. Since 2007 he is member, and since 2016 vice-chairman of the Committee of Mechanics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS). In 2013 he became head of the Section of Solid Mechanics at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of CUT. Since 2013 he is member of the Committee of Evaluation of Scienti fic Units in Poland, and in 2019 he took the position of chairman of the Science Evaluation Commission at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He is member of the scientific committees of numerous conferences, and member of editorial boards of two JCR scientific journals.

In 2017 he was appointed member of the General Assembly and the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM, Udine). Also, he is chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Polish Congress of Mechanics, PCM-CMM-2019. Professor Skoczeń participated in many projects worldwide (LHC, FAIR, EUROnu, TIARA), and headed several research projects in Poland. He is the author of more than 150 publications, books, reports and scientific studies, including three individual monographs, one of them published by Springer-Verlag. His research is focused on solid mechanics, thermodynamics and solid state physics, in particular constitutive modelling of materials for extremely low temperatures. 

 

 

Professor Marek Stankiewicz

Jagiellonian University
Kraków, Poland

"Synchrotron SOLARIS - applications for experimental mechanics"

 

Marek Stankiewicz graduated from Jagiellonian University Department of Physics in 1973. His early research in the field of Atomic and Molecular Physics was concluded with PhD thesis dedicated to phenomenon of quantum beats in forward scattered light. In 1986 he joined the Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy group at University of Reading (UK) and started synchrotron radiation based research at Daresbury Laboratory. Permanently  employed at the   Jagiellonian University Institute of Physics he continued very intense international scientific   collaboration visiting University of Reading, Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), synchrotron centers MAX-lab in Lund (S), Sincrotrone Elettra in Trieste (I) and participating in numerous research projects in the field of atomic and molecular physics using synchrotron radiation.

Between 2004-2007 he also participated in the The UK Attosecond Technology Project – devoted to generation of ultra-short, high intensity light pulses and research on their interaction with matter. In 2009 he received a professor title of physics sciences. Lobbying for a long time the construction of a synchrotron light source in Poland, since 2010 he has been contracted as the director of the granted National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS which was constructed 2010-2015 and where he continues to date. Member of the Board of Polish Synchrotron Radiation Society.

Member of scientific committees of Polish National Center of Nuclear Research and Academic Centre for Materials and Nanotechnology AGH. Member of Board of Directors of the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS). Vice chair of the Central European Research Infrastructure Consortium CERIC-ERIC. Delegate of Ministry of Science and Higher Education to ESFRI Working Group for Monitoring of Research Infrastructures.    

 

Professor George Z.Voyiadjis

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Louisiana State University, USA

"Gradient Enhanced Physically Based Plasticity:
Size Effects and Shear Bands"

 

George Z. Voyiadjis is the Boyd Professor at the Louisiana State University, in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. This is the highest professorial rank awarded by the Louisiana State University System. He is also the holder of the Freeport-MacMoRan Endowed Chair in Engineering. He joined the faculty of Louisiana State University in 1980. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He holds this position since February of 2001. He also served from 1992 to 1994 as the Acting Associate Dean of the Graduate School. He currently also serves since 2012 as the Director of the Louisiana State University Center for GeoInformatics (LSU C4G; http://c4gnet.lsu.edu/c4g/ ).

Voyiadjis is a Member of the European Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of both the Polish Academy of Sciences, Division IV (Technical Sciences) and the National Academy of Engineering of Korea. He is the recipient of the 2008 Nathan M. Newmark Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the 2012 Khan International Medal for outstanding life-long Contribution to the field of Plasticity. He was also the recipient of the Medal for his significant contribution to Continuum Damage Mechanics, presented to him during the Second International Conference on Damage Mechanics (ICDM2), Troyes, France July, 2015. This is sponsored by the International Journal of Damage Mechanics and is held every three years.

Voyiadjis was Honored in April of 2012 by the International Symposium on “Modeling Material Behavior at Multiple Scales” sponsored by Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, chaired by T. Park and X. Chen (with a dedicated special issue in the Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology of the ASME). He was also honored by an International Mini-Symposium on “Multiscale and Mechanism Oriented Models: Computations and Experiments” sponsored by the International Symposium on Plasticity and Its Current Applications, chaired by V. Tomar and X. Chen, in January 2013.

He is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Engineering Science, the American Academy of Mechanics, the Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE, and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was on the Board of Governors of the Engineering Mechanics Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Past President of the Board of Directors of the Society of Engineering Science. He was also the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Materials Division (MD) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Dr. Voyiadjis is the Founding Chief Editor of the Journal of Nanomechanics and Micromechanics of the ASCE and is on the editorial board of numerous engineering journals. He was also selected by Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) as one of the only two World Class University foreign scholars in the area of civil and architectural engineering to work on nanofusion in civil engineering. This is a multimillion research grant.

Voyiadjis’ primary research interest is in plasticity and damage mechanics of metals, metal matrix composites, polymers and ceramics with emphasis on the theoretical modeling, numerical simulation of material behavior, and experimental correlation. Research activities of particular interest encompass macro-mechanical and micro-mechanical constitutive modeling, experimental procedures for quantification of crack densities, inelastic behavior, thermal effects, interfaces, damage, failure, fracture, impact, and numerical modeling.

Dr. Voyiadjis’ research has been performed on developing numerical models that aim at simulating the damage and dynamic failure response of advanced engineering materials and structures under high-speed impact loading conditions. This work will guide the development of design criteria and fabrication processes of high performance materials and structures under severe loading conditions. Emphasis is placed on survivability area that aims to develop and field a contingency armor that is thin and lightweight, but with a very high level of an overpressure protection system that provides low penetration depths. The formation of cracks and voids in the adiabatic shear bands, which are the precursors to fracture, are mainly investigated.

He has two patents, over 340 refereed journal articles and 22 books (12 as editor) to his credit. He gave over 400 presentations as plenary, keynote and invited speaker as well as other talks. Over sixty two graduate students (37 Ph. D.) completed their degrees under his direction.  He has also supervised numerous postdoctoral associates. Voyiadjis has been extremely successful in securing more than $30.0 million in research funds as a principal investigator/investigator from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Department of Transportation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and major companies such as IBM and Martin Marietta.

He has been invited to give plenary presentations and keynote lectures in many countries around the world. He has also been invited as guest editor in numerous volumes of the Journal of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, International Journal of Plasticity, Journal of Engineering Mechanics of the ASCE, and Journal of Mechanics of Materials. These special issues focus in the areas of damage mechanics, structures, fracture mechanics, localization, and bridging of length scales.

 

Professor Paul Wood

Institute for Innovation in Sustainable Engineering, University of Derby
Derby, UK

 ,,Selective laser melting of a high precision turbomachinery application in In718 alloy"

 

Graduating from the University of Aston in 1985 with a good honours degree in mechanical engineering followed by a PhD in the technical field of manufacturing.  A career spanning nearly four decades with fifteen years in industry, and twenty two years in collaborative research at the universities of Warwick, Strathclyde and more recently Derby. Notable achievements include the establishment of a centre of competence for high rate testing of materials to service the design of lightweight passenger transport vehicles to ensure compliance to the safety requirements.

In 2008, Paul was nominated the principal UK expert by the British Standards Institute and appointed to support the development of a new international standard ISO26203-2 covering servo-hydraulic systems for high rate materials testing and published in 2012. Paul received a generous grant gift from a well-known international automotive company in recognition of his achievements in this field of research. 

He has an extensive list of publications associated with materials and manufacturing and has supervised several PhD student completions. Paul’s knowledge of materials and manufacturing is extensive covering the thermal and dynamic behaviour of conventional materials, exotic lightweight alloys and high temperature alloys in a wide range of applications. Presently, as director of the IISE, he leads a programme of research in advanced manufacturing with emphasis on selective laser melting and multi-axis CNC machining.