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Plenary Lectures

EMI 2024 IC / Program / Plenary Lectures

  • Prof. Zdeněk P. BAŽANT (Northwestern University, USA)

    Educated as civil engineer in Czechoslovakia, graduated from the Czech Technical University – CTU, followed by a doctorate at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Zdeněk Bažant worked at CTU until his habiliation. After several PostDoc assignments in France and the US, he finally joined Northwestern University, where he has been active as a professor ever since.

    He is one of the most influential and highly cited researchers in engineering science at large; with fundamental, long-lasting contributions to topics such as mechanical size effects in materials and creep of concrete.

    His achievements have been prestigiously awarded in the academic realm, including memberships with the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Science of the United States of America, with the Royal Society London, with the Czech, Spanish, and Indian Academies of Engineering, the Austrian and several Italian Academies of Sciences; and 7 honorary doctorates (CTU, TU Karlsruhe, CU Bolder, Politecnico di Milano, INSA Lyon, TU Wien, Ohia State University Columbus).

    Sprain energy consequences for damage localization, fracture mechanics and strain-gradient models

  • Prof. Emanuela DEL GADO (Georgetown University, USA)

    Emanuela Del Gado is a physics Professor and the Director of the Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology at Georgetown University. She was a Marie Curie Fellow and the Swiss National Science Foundation Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich, and has held visiting position at MIT, ESPCI Paris, ENS Lyon, and University Paris Saclay. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018, she is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2020) and a Fellow of the Society of Rheology (2023). Her research is aimed at the spatiotemporal characterization of microscopic dynamical processes and the unraveling of microstructural underpinnings in the rheology of soft materials, with a focus on colloidal gels, cement and clay gels, and other soft solids.

    Memory of flow and residual stresses: from jammed soft solids to cement pastes

  • Prof. Agathe ROBISSON (TU Wien, Austria)

    Educated as materials scientist and engineer in France, with a graduation from INSA Lyon and a doctorate from Mines Paris Tech, Agathe Robisson has spent 15 years as an industrial researcher with Schlumberger in France and the US, before she finally joined TU Wien, where she has been active as a professor ever since.

    She is a globally recognized expert in the behavior of complex fluids and suspensions and the mechanics of soft materials such as elastomers, while having made important contributions concerning the fracture of concrete.

    She has brought a fresh, industry-enriched perspective into academia, which already bears fruit, e.g. through several awards bestowed to her students and mentees.

    Development of microstructural heterogeneities in cementitious slurries and mortars at rest and under flow: a hypothesis for pumping blockage and material defects

  • Prof. Alfredo SOLDATI (TU Wien, Austria)

    Educated as nuclear physicist in Italy, with graduation and doctorate from the University of Pisa, Alfredo Soldati has held several assistant and associate professorships in Italy, before – in parallel to his appointment with the University of Udine, he finally joined TU Wien, where he has been active as a professor ever since.

    He is a globally recognized expert in turbulent multiphase flow, with many environmental and industrial applications, including river flood forecasting and host-to-host airborne transmission of COVID-19.

    His achievements have been prestigiously awarded in the academic realm, including the rank of Fellow bestowed from the American Physical Society and from the European Society of Mechanics (EUROMECH).

    Transfer fluxes, breakage, coalescence, and drop size distribution in turbulence

  • Prof. Pol SPANOS (Rice University, USA)

    Educated as mechanical and civil engineer in Greece and the US, with graduations at the National Technical University of Athens and at CalTech, and a doctorate from the latter institution, Pol Spanos joined first the University of Texas at Austin, and finally the Rice University in Houston, where he has been active as a professor ever since.

    He has been a pioneer in stochastic mechanics, with a very broad spectrum of applications, ranging all the way from structural engineering to biomedicine.

    His achievements have been prestigiously awarded in the academic realm, including memberships with the National Academy of Engineering of the United States of America, of Russia, of India, with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    Linearization approaches for stochastic dynamic analysis of systems endowed with non-integer order differential elements

  • Prof. Franz-Josef ULM (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)

    Educated as civil engineer in Germany and France, with graduations at TU Munich (Germany) and at École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (France), and a doctorate from the latter institution, Franz-Josef Ulm spent his early scientific career at the Laboratoire des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, France, receiving the habilitation at École Normale Superieur de Cachan, France. Thereafter, he joined M.I.T., where he has been active as a professor ever since.

    Throughout his career, he has belonged to the world leaders when it comes to opening engineering mechanics towards physics and chemistry, and as a result he has, over the years, largely transformed the understanding of the most important construction material, concrete. To that end, he has integrated essential aspects of physical chemistry, of experimental materials science and engineering, of computational statistical physics, and recently, of electricity, into the repertoire of application-oriented, yet fundamental engineering science.

    His achievements have been prestigiously awarded in the academic realm, including memberships with the National Academy of Engineering of the United States of America, with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and an Honorary Doctorate of TU Wien.

    Mechanics and electrochemistry for bulk energy storage in concrete materials & structures

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