EuraSEM's Council

The council, containing 21 members, is mandated by the GA to implement the decisions of the General Assembly (GA), to audit the activities of all the committees of the Society, and to ensure that officers, committees and organization mechanisms are in place for the Society to meet its main objectives. The council elects the President; the two Vice-Presidents; the Secretary and the Treasurer.

The 14 regular council members of EuraSEM are:

Nikolaos Alexopoulos

Assistant Professor, Aegean University, Greece   

Prof. N. Alexopoulos received his Ph.D. (2004) in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics from the University of Patras, Greece and conducted Post-Doctoral research (2005-2007) at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece regarding the structural integrity degradation of aeronautical aluminum alloys and structures due to corrosion. He has been a Research Associate at the Research and Development Department of Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI) (2007 to 2010) gaining valuable Industrial experience. In 2012 he was elected at the University of the Aegean where he still serves as Assistant Professor of Mechanics of Materials. His research interests lies within the sector of experimental mechanics, mechanical behavior of engineering materials, fracture mechanics, casting of aluminum alloys, corrosion of aluminum alloys and steels, nanomaterials and nanocomposites. He has published more than 50 papers in scientific journals, presented more than 100 papers in conference proceedings and participated in more than 20 National and European research projects. He is an elected member of Board of Directors of the Greek Society of Experimental Mechanics of Materials (GSEMM) as well as of the European society for Experimental Mechanics (EURASEM).

Sven Bossuyt

Professor, Aalto University, Finland  

My main interests in research and teaching are the science of engineering materials, the physics of metals, and the mechanics of materials, as well as interdisciplinarity in science and engineering. Particular research topics I have worked on as a full-time researcher have been to investigate the deformation behaviour and processing of bulk metallic glasses, to relate inverse problem methodologies in experimental mechanics to inverse problems of interest in mathematics, and to develop next-generation digital image correlation methods for full-field measurements of localised deformations.

Jan Chvojan

Dr., Lab of Research & Testing Institute Pilsen, Czech Rep.

Jan Chvojan graduated from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czechia in the field of engineering technology (1994). He received his PhD in the Department of Machine Design at the same educational institute (2017). Since 1997 he is the Head of the Dynamic Testing Laboratory of the Research and Testing Institute in Pilsen. The Laboratory is focused on research of the static and fatigue strength of materials and structures in the field of both energy and transport industry. His main research interests include research of the fatigue strength and service life of rolling stock components, especially bogie frames, using both classical conventional and advanced materials based on glass fibre reinforced plastic and their application in modern transport systems. He also researches the vibration resistance of public transport vehicle equipment and the seismic resistance of key components of nuclear power plants. In addition to commercial research projects, he has got a number of research and development activities in the National Centre of Competence for Road and Rail Transport Systems, the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, Smart Eureka, and others.

Raj Das

Professor, RMIT University, Australia

Prof Raj Das is the Full Professor of Applied Mechanics and leads the ‘Simulation of Advanced Materials and Structures (SAMS)’ research group in the ‘Sir Lawrence Wackett Defence and Aerospace Centre’ of RMIT University (Australia). Prof Das has nearly 20 years of experience in the design, analysis and optimisation of engineering materials and structures with a focus on computational mechanics, structural optimisation, composite structures, failure analysis, and damage tolerance design. Prof Das has published more than 300 papers in international journals and conferences in collaboration with several universities, institutes and industries. Prof Das has a PhD from Monash University, Australia in Applied Mechanics, and has previously worked in the University of Auckland (New Zealand), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Australia), and the University of Manchester (UK). Prof Das is associated with various scientific and technical societies broadly related to Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. He has been granted several national and international awards and fellowships. 

Mateusz Kopec

Dr., Inst. Fundamental Technological Research, Poland  

Dr Mateusz Kopec graduated from the Military University of Technology in Material Sciences (2015). He received his PhD in the Mechanical Engineering Department of Imperial College London in 2020. Since 2021 he is the Head of the Laboratory for Materials and Structures Testing at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPPT PAN). From 2020 he is a Member of the Polish Materials Science Society (PTM) and a Member of the Board of the Polish Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (PTMTS). His main research interests include hot stamping of titanium alloys, implants for biomedical applications, fatigue damage development in power engineering steels and thermal barrier coatings for nickel alloys. He received over 15 awards for his scientific and didactic achievements.

Georgio Olmi 

Professor, University of Bologna, Italy

Giorgio Olmi (GO) is currently an Associate Professor of Machine Design at the University of Bologna with Scientific Qualification as a Full Professor. He received a M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Mechanics of Materials in 2005. He is responsible for teaching units dealing with experimental mechanics of solids and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). GO’s main research topics are fatigue, the mechanical behaviour of parts built by Additive Manufacturing, fracture microscopy analyses, strain gauges, NDT, and joining techniques. GO has been appointed as a member of two research assessment committees at the University of Bologna and at a national level. Moreover, he is currently acting as Associate/Academic Editor of “Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science” and “Actuators” and has served as Guest Editor of several Special Issues in Journals. GO is the author or co-author of over 180 papers published in peer-reviewed International Journals and in the Proceedings of International and National Conferences, including a scientific book on Experimental Stress Analysis for materials and structures. Bibliometric data (based on the SCOPUS database, as of April 2023): Number of indexed papers: 101; Number of papers in Peer-Reviewed International Journals: 60; Number of citations: 956; h-index: 15.

Bernhard Pichler

Professor,TU Wien, Austria

Bernhard Pichler is full professor at the Institute for Mechanics of Materials and Structures and director of the research group on “Structural Analysis and Experimental Mechanics”: Graduation in Civil Engineering at TU Wien (Dipl.-Ing.) 1999, Dr. techn. (Ph.D.) at TU Wien in 2003, 2006-2008 Postdoctoral Fellow at École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris-Tech, France, Habilitation at TU Wien in 2009, Associate Prof. at TU Wien between 2010 and 2020; >85 refereed publications in the field of Civil Engineering, with an impact indicated through a Hirsch-index of h = 26 / 23 according Google Scholar / Scopus; with a total citation number of 2603/1989 (as of December 2022); since 2022 Editor of Cement & Concrete Research; 8 book chapters; 2011-2015 Chair of the Properties of Materials Committee of the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) of ASCE, 2013-2022 Delegate in of the Academic Partners in the Steering Committee of NANOCEM, the Industrial-Academic Nanoscience Research Network for Sustainable Cement and Concrete (www.nanocem.org), since 2014 treasurer of the Austrian Association for Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 2017-2021 president of the Central European Association for Computational Mechanics, 2018-2020 Chair of the Experimental Analysis and Instrumentation Committee of EMI, ASCE.

Blazej Skoczen

Professor Cracow University of Technology, Cracow, Poland  

Professor Błażej Skoczeń is working at the Cracow University of Technology (CUT) since 1984. 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 CUT, and in 2009 he became head of the Institute of Applied Mechanics. In 2013 he became head of the Section of Solid Mechanics at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of CUT. In 2019, he took the position of chairman of the Science Evaluation Commission at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. In 2017 he was appointed member of the General Assembly and the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM, Udine). Professor Skoczeń is the author of more than 150 publications, books, reports and scientific studies, including three individual monographs. 

Felipe Sesé

Dr, University of Jaén, Spain    

Dr. Felipe-Sesé graduated in Mechanical Engineering at University of Jaén (Spain) in 2008. After a period at industry as R&D engineering, Dr. Felipe-Sesé joined the University of Jaen in 2010 and obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Jaén in 2014. He became Associate Prof in 2021. He has been involved in experimental mechanics since 2010. His fields of research are the development of optical methods and processing algorithms and their application in experimental mechanics. Main research work is focused in dynamic testing, such as vibration or impact and comparative of results and validation. He has been involved in different national projects on, vibration and modal testing, optical methods and thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA). He is author of more than 30 papers published in highly ranked scientific journals in the field of experimental mechanics and more than 40 proceedings papers.

Erman Tekkaya

Professor, TU Dortmund, Germany

Dr. A. Erman Tekkaya is currently professor and the director of the Institute for Metal Forming and Lightweight Components (IUL) at the Technische Universität Dortmund in Dortmund/ Germany. His research interests cover fundamentals and technology of novel metal forming processes as well as material characterization for modelling the material behavior during plastic deformations. Some of the current research projects are on thermo-mechanical sheet forming processes, profile bending, hot extrusion, impact extrusion, damage-controlled metal forming, the plane torsion test, remote material testing and metal forming including augmented reality applications.  Dr. Tekkaya is fellow of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) and member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Materialkunde (DGM). He is Editor-in-Chief of the CIRP Annals and the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology (JMPT). He is member of the Board of Trustees of the German Research Association for Steel Application (FOSTA). Dr. Tekkaya is currently the Chairman of The German Metal Forming Association (AGU).

Anastasios Vassilopoulos

Professor, EPFL, Switserland

 Dr Anastasios P Vassilopoulos is currently a Senior Scientist (MER) at the Composite Construction Laboratory (CCLab) of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, (EPFL), Switzerland. Anastasios worked for his Master’s Degree at the University of Bristol, UK and obtained his PhD from the University of Patras, Greece where he also worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate. His areas of research include experimental methods for the study of the behavior of composite materials under static and fatigue loading, development of fatigue life prediction methodologies for composite materials and structures under variable amplitude complex stress states and design of constructions with composite materials”.

Yoshida Sanichiro

Professor, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA

 Sanichiro Yoshida received his undergraduate and graduate educations in the field of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Keio University, Japan. During this period, he had the opportunity to work as a student researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. Under the supervision of Dr. Author V. Phelps, he conducted research in gaseous electronics. From this experience, he learned basics of scientific research.  After receiving a PhD in 1986 from Keio University, he has conducted experimental and theoretical research on various topics, including developments and applications of lasers, optical interferometry, optical and acoustical characterization of material strength, and deformation and fracture of solids. His recent research interest is focused on development of a wave theory of deformation and fracture of solids. Currently, he is a Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University where he enjoys research with students. When not doing science, he will be found on the Judo mats or tennis courts on campus.

Wei-Chung Wang

Professor, Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

Professor Wei-Chung Wang received his Ph. D. degree in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University in 1985.  He is now a professor in the Department of Power Mechanical Engineering of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, Republic of China. Professor Wang is the fellow and the former President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM).  His recent research interests include experimental mechanics, fracture mechanics, thermal stresses, precision optical measurement and nondestructive testing.  Professor Wang has been an active participant and session/symposium organizer of the International Conference on Experimental Mechanics, the flagship international conference organized by EURASEM since 1991. Professor Wang is the recipient of the Pericles Theocaris Award, EURASEM in 2016. He is also the recipient of the Zandman Award and Tatnall Award of SEM in 2015.

George Z. Voyiadjis

Boyd Professor, Louisiana State University, USA

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. Voyiadjis is a Foreign Member of several Academies/societies and the recipient of numerous awards. 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. He has two patents, over 385 refereed journal articles and 23 books (13 as editor) to his credit. He gave over 440 presentations as plenary, keynote and invited speaker as well as other talks. Over sixty two graduate students (40 Ph. D.) completed their degrees under his direction.  He has also supervised numerous postdoctoral associates. Voyiadjis has been extremely successful in securing more than $40.0 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.

The President of the next and past ICEM-conference and the chair of the Technical Committees and affiliated societies are the 4 members by right: 

Zbigniew L. Kowaleswski

Professor,    

 Professor Z. Kowalewski graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics, Warsaw University of Technology (1981). The Ph.D. and habilitation he received at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPPT PAN) in 1988 and 1997, recpectively. In 2008, he  was nominated by president of Poland as full Professor in Mechanical Engineering. He was the British Council Fellow from 1992 to 1993 at the University of Manchester. Professor Zbigniew Kowalewski is appointed at the  IPPT PAN since 1985, he also worked at the Warsaw University of Technology from 1997 to 2010. Since 2011 he is a Head of the  Department of Experimental Mechanics at IPPT PAN. From 2015 to 2019 he was the President of the Polish Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. From 2019 he has been elected as the President of the Scientific Council of IPPT PAN. He is the Vice-president of EuraSEM. His 35 years research work experience is mainly devoted to: plasticity, creep, fatigue, experimental methods in solid mechanics, modelling of creep constitutive equations. He is an author or co-author of more than 380 papers published in well known international journals and conference proceedings, 14 books, and 8 patents.

J.F. Silva Gomes

Professor Emeritus, UPorto, Portugal  

Professor J.F. Silva Gomes obtained his graduation in Mech. Eng. from the University of Porto in 1971, followed by an MSc and a PhD degrees at UMIST/UK. He worked at U. Porto for more than 40 years, where his teaching and research interests were mainly related to Solid Mech., Impact and Exp. Mech.. He was president of INEGI-Inst. of Mech. Eng. for more than 12 years, and was V-P of LAETA (Assoc. Lab.of Energy, Transport and Aeronautics) from 2006 to 2012. Retired from his position as Full-Professor since 2011, he still continues to give a regular contribution to the U. Porto and INEGI, as Project Manager, Scientific Adviser and Conference Organiser. He was awarded the position of Emeritus Professor of U. Porto in March 2016. He is currently Pres. of APAET-Portuguese Soc. for Exp Mech., and member of the EURASEM Council. He is also member of the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Mechanics and Materials in Design (Springer) and of the Experimental Mechanics Review (APAET).

Leslie Banks-Sills

Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Leslie Banks-Sills is a Professor Emerita at Tel Aviv University.  She serves on the editorial boards of Engineering Fracture Mechanics, International Journal of Fracture and International Journal of Structural Integrity.  Among the awards she has received is an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University in 2014 and a Life-time Achievement Award from EuraSEM in 2018.  In addition, she was a Vice President of EuraSEM from 2008 to 2018.Her research interests include the use of analytical, numerical and experimental methods to treat fracture problems which include homogeneous materials, bonds, interfaces and composites. In particular, recently she and her group have been examining the propagation of delaminations in cross-ply and woven composites. She has published over 100 papers in international journals and published two books.  The last is Interface Fracture and Delaminations in Composite Material. Springer, The Netherlands (2018).  In Google Scholar, she has 3,720 citations and an h-index of 34.

Elżbieta A. Pieczyska,

Professor, IPPT, Poland  

PhD DSc., Institute of Fundamental Technological Research IPPT PAN. Head of Division for Applied Thermomechanics. JSPS Fellow and Invited Professor i.a. at the AIT, Toyota, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Tsukuba University, NIMS; Japan. ICEM regular participant since Oxford 1998. EuraSEM member since 2004.

She has been involved in experimental mechanics since 1980 including mechanical testing in wide spectra of the strain rates, acoustic emission, infrared thermography, thermomechanical couplings, digital image correlation and material structure analysis. She was working on stainless, DP and TRIP Steels, Shape Memory Alloys, Polymers and Composites, recently on innovative Ti alloy – Gum Metal. She was coordinated national and international projects ranging from measurements for experimental mechanics, material and thermomechanical couplings.Author of 1 monograph, 2 books, 4 book chapters and around 160 papers published in highly ranked  scientific journals. Honored by the EuraSEM Merit of Award in 2018.

The 3 co-opted council members are:

Dario Croccolo

Professor, University of Bologna, Italy

Prof. D. Croccolo has been employed at the University of Bologna since 1995 and became a full professor of Machine Design in 2016. Since 1996 has been in charge of the DIN Library, and in 2007, he was made Director of the Italian Design Summer School: Art, Society and Industry and in 2021, he was made Director of the Industrial Engineering For Advanced Automotive. He was one of the Associate Editors of the journal “Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science” from 2015 to 2017. Later, he was nominated Deputy Editor in 2018. His research activity mainly focuses on the following fields: shaft-hub connection, threaded connection, friction coefficient definition, the fatigue behaviour of materials, adhesive bolted and interference fit joints (hybrid joints), and additively manufactured components. On the fourth of July, 2018, he received the EuraSEM ‘Robert Hooke’ award. Finally, he is the author of more than 200 publications, of which 112 are included in ISI or SCOPUS databases.

Danny Van Hemelrijck

Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium 

Danny Van Hemelrijck received a  M.S in Civil Engineering (1984), a second M.S. in Computer Science (1987) and a Ph.D. in applied Sciences (1992) form the ‘Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)’, Belgium. After a short period as postdoctoral researcher,  he was appointed in 1996 professor at the department of Mechanics of Materials and Constructions (MeMC) of the ‘Vrije Universiteit Brussel’, Belgium. His main research interests include the  mechanical characterisation of fibre reinforced material systems under complex loading conditions, Thermoelastic Stress Analysis and damage characterisation using different NDT-techniques. He has co-authored over 150 peer reviewed journal papers and over 200 conference papers on topics related to his research interests. He co-organised the conference series on ‘Emerging Technologies in NDT’ and organised the 18th edition of the ‘International Conference of Experimental Mechanics (ICEM18)’ in Brussels, Belgium in 2018. In 2008 he joined the European Society of Experimental Mechanics (EuraSEM) as member of the executive council (permanent secretary) and from July 2018 until July 2022 he acted as president.

Paul Wood

Professor, University of Derby, Uk  

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.