Franco Brezzi (FB). Professor of Mathematical Analysis since 1976 and of Numerical Analysis since 2008 at the Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche (IMATI) of CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche). Awarded as ISI Highly cited researcher in Mathematics, his scientific contribution counts more than 150 papers in international journals, 5 books and many book chapters. His scientific interests are mainly concentrated in the field of Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations. In particular, from the point of view of methodological tools, he works mainly on Finite Element Methods (of various kinds). From the applicative point of view, he is mostly interested in problems arising from various Engineering fields, such as Structural Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, and Electromagnetics.
Robert L. Taylor (RLT). Professor in the Graduate School, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. His main research areas cover several areas of computational mechanics including: element technology, contact problems, solution algorithms and software development. He is well known for his co-authored books on the finite element method (with O.C. Zienkiewicz et al.) and development of the finite element program FEAP.
Ferdinando Auricchio (FA). Professor of Mechanics of Solids at the University of Pavia, Italy. FA main research topics span over constitutive modeling of innovative materials, biomechanics and finite element methods. He is currently leading one of the five strategic project for the whole University of Pavia, project entitled “3D@UniPV: Virtual Modeling and Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) for Advanced Materials”.
Manfred Bischoff (MB). Professor and head of the Institute for Structural Mechanics at the University of Stuttgart. Winner in 2000 of the EUROMECH European Young Scientist Award and in 2008 of the IACM Young Investigator Award, elected in 2012 fellow of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM). His main research topics are nonlinear computational structural mechanics and dynamics, modeling and analysis of shells, finite element technology, structural optimization, contact problems, isogeometric analysis, computational material modeling.
Alessandro Reali (AR). Professor of Mechanics of Solids at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the University of Pavia, and “Fischer” Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study of the Technical University of Munich. His main research interests are isogeometric analysis, advanced constitutive modeling, mixed finite elements, and strong-form (particle and collocation) methods. He is an ISI “Highly Cited Researcher” and the recipient, among other honors, of the ERC “Ideas” Starting Grant, of the IACM “Argyris” Award, and of the ECCOMAS “Zienkiewicz” Award.
Giancarlo Sangalli (GS). Professor of Numerical Analysis at the Mathematics Department of University of Pavia, GS has worked on multiscale numerical methods, domain decomposition methods and, more recently, on isogeometric methods, with application in solid, fluid mechanics, and electromagnetism. In particular, he has contributed to the analysis of isogeometric methods in several directions, ranging from basic elliptic problems, to eigenvalue analyses, complex geometry parametrizations (e.g., T-splines), and efficient inplementation (quadrature, linear solvers).