Christophe Bouvet

Christophe Bouvet is Full Professor of Structural Engineering and Composite Structures at ISAE-SUPAERO (Toulouse, France) and a researcher at the Institut Clément Ader (ICA). He is also an Assistant Professor at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, where he continues his research at ICA. He received his PhD from the University of Franche-Comté (Besançon, France) with a dissertation on “Shape memory alloys under non-proportional loading.” His research focuses on damage mechanisms in composite structures, including impact, edge impact, compression after impact, open holes, and crack propagation. He has extensive expertise in finite element modeling of damage, impact damage tolerance in aeronautical composite structures, and advanced experimental methods such as infrared thermography for energy release rate measurements. Professor Bouvet has published over 120 international peer-reviewed articles and his work has received more than 6,400 citations, with an h-index of 41 (Google Scholar). More information and publications can be found on: ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and ICA.

Our plenary speaker will present “On the fracture toughness of tensile fiber failure in composite structures” by C. Bouvet, R. Rutar, J. Naciri, T. Bianchi, J. Serra, B. Vieille, L. Ratsifandrihana. Please click here to read the abstract.

Weiqiu Chen

Weiqiu Chen is the Qiushi distinguished professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He is also an adjunct professor of University of Galway, Ireland. His recent research focuses on high-throughput materials characterization, design of tunable metamaterials, and vibration reduction and wave manipulation. He has published more than 500 papers in refereed journals and coauthored 5 monographs. He received the award of Distinguished Fellow from ICCES2024 (Singapore) in 2024, and was elected as a member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2025. He is now the Editor-in-Chief of Acta Mechanica Solida Sinica, and the associate editor of several international journals including Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, Journal of Thermal Stresses, etc.

Our plenary speaker will present “Contact analysis of finite-sized inhomogeneous specimens and high-throughput materials characterization” by L. Z. C. Chen and W. Q. Chen. Please click here to read the abstract.

Carlos G. Dávila

Carlos Dávila earned his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech in 1991. He began his career at NASA Langley Research Center as a National Research Council Associate, later joining the Army Research Laboratory, and ultimately serving as a NASA Civil Servant. His research centers on finite element methods for predicting damage propagation and residual strength in metallic and composite structures. He has contributed as a structures analyst to several high-profile accident investigations, including the 2001 AA587 Airbus A300-600R crash. With over 50 peer-reviewed publications and more than 17,000 citations, his work on composite damage and cohesive modeling has had a lasting impact on the field. Carlos has received multiple honors, including the NASA Exceptional Technical Achievement Medal (2005) and the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2025) for his pioneering contributions to damage modeling in composite structures. In January 2026, he retired from NASA and continues his research as an Emeritus Langley Associate. Since 2020, he has served as an Invited Full Professor at the University of Porto, continuing to advance research and education in structural mechanics.

His plenary lecture is titled “Softening the Gap between Wöhler and Paris – New Approaches for Fatigue Analysis –”.

Christian Hellmich

Christian Hellmich is Full Professor at TU Wien (Vienna, Austria) and Director of the Institute for Mechanics of Materials and Structures. He earned his engineering diploma (1995), PhD (1999), and habilitation (2004) at TU Wien, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT (2000–2002), alongside visiting professorships in France, Italy, and Germany. Working with international collaborators, he has developed multiscale bio-chemo-mechanical models—supported by theory, computation, and experimental validation—for a wide range of biological and engineered materials (from bone and soft tissues to concrete, wood, rock/soil, steel, rubber, graphene, DNA, and biomaterials), with applications spanning concrete, tunnel, pipeline, and biomedical engineering. His interdisciplinary approach bridges engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine; he is also trained as a violinist and engages at the interface of Science and Arts.

He has co-authored 188 peer-reviewed journal articles (plus a comparable number of book chapters/proceedings) and delivered 360+ international presentations, often as invited/keynote/plenary speaker. He serves in editorial roles for journals including Journal of Engineering Mechanics (ASCE), Mechanics of Materials, and AIP Applied Physics Reviews, and has provided extensive reviewing/advisory service, including as an ERC panel member. He has held major leadership roles in professional societies (EMI-ASCE, IA-CONCREEP, ESB, MRS, and the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences). His work has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Kardinal Innitzer Advancement Award (2004), the Lower Austria Science Recognition Award (2005), the ECCOMAS Zienkiewicz Award (2008), an ERC grant (2010), and the ASCE Walter L. Huber Research Prize (2012), and he was named Fellow of EMI (2014), EAMBES (2019), corresponding member of ÖAW (2019), and Fellow of SES (2023).

Our plenary speaker will present “Novel insight into the mechanics of NATM and TBM tunnels”. Please click here to read the abstract.  

J. N. Reddy

Dr. Reddy is a Distinguished Professor, Regents’ Professor, and the holder of the O’Donnell Foundation Chair IV in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is known for his significant contributions to the field of applied mechanics through the authorship of many textbooks (25) and journal papers (>800). His pioneering works on the development of shear deformation theories have had a major impact and have led to new research developments and applications. In recent years, his research has focused on the development of locking-free shell finite elements and nonlocal and non-classical continuum mechanics problems dealing with architected materials and structures and damage and fracture in solids.

This plenary is a personal retrospective of the author’s professional journey through mechanics education and research, which began while he was a Ph.D. student in the USA in the 1970s. The lecture will include an overview of highly-cited shear deformation and layerwise theories for composite laminates, finite element models for viscous incompressible flows, robust shell finite elements, non-local mechanics, and a graph-based finite element framework (GraFEA) for damage and fracture in brittle materials.

Our plenary speaker will present “My Journey Through Composites Mechanics Education and Research: A Personal Retrospective”. Please click here to read the abstract  

Laurent Risse

Laurent Risse is a Senior Expert in Composite structural sizing at Airbus Commercial. With over 30 years of experience in leading aircraft manufacturers, he is recognized for his expertise in aircraft structures sizing and justification. He has led the development and validation of major composite components, including wing and fuselage structures, and played a key role as structure analysis team leader for the Airbus A350 composite fuselage. More recently, he contributed to the preliminary architecture definition for Airbus ZEROe project. He actively participates in research projects and serves as a Professor at ISAE-SUPAERO.

Composite materials have been progressively introduced into aerospace structures over the past 50 years, representing the majority of the primary structures in new-generation large aircraft such as the Airbus A350. Building on this experience, this presentation revisits the main points and best practices applicable to the sizing of composite structures: their specificities, the importance of the link between manufacturing / design / stress analysis, generic sizing criteria and justification approaches.

The importance of understanding the fundamentals of composite structure mechanical behaviour will be illustrated through examples. The presentation then opens up to future application prospects and associated challenges.

Our plenary speaker will present “Composite structures in large aircraft components - status and perspectives”. Please click here to read the abstract.

Rostand Moutou Pitti

Rostand Moutou Pitti is a professor and researcher at Clermont Auvergne University in France. His work focuses on the coupling of thermo-hygro-visco-mechanical behaviour and cracking in wood and composite materials. Recently, his work has also focused on the characterization and cracking behaviour of materials and structures produced by additive manufacturing using wood and biodegradable polymers for sustainable construction. He is also interested in the mechanical behaviour of tropical materials, particularly secondary species used in construction and mobility materials. He is the author of more than a hundred scientific publications. He will lead a plenary session as Vice-President of the African Society for Eco-Materials (ECOMAT-AFRICA). He will discuss the Society's main activities and give a presentation on the characterization and mechanical behaviour of several types of wood promoted in Africa.

Our plenary speaker will present “Characterization and Mechanical Behaviour of African Promotion Woods through the Activities of ECOMAT-AFRICA”. Please click here to read the abstract.  

Kun Zhou

Professor Zhou earned his BEng/MEng from Tsinghua University (1998, 2001) and his PhD from NTU (2006). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University (2007–2010) and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University (2013). His research focuses on mechanics and additive manufacturing of metallic and polymeric materials, spanning contact mechanics (analytical modeling of contact response/failure in heterogeneous materials) and high-performance alloys and composites for powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition through multiscale process–structure–property modeling. He has published 560+ journal papers, five books, and 40 book chapters, with 40,200+ citations and an h-index of 97 (Google Scholar), and was a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2022–2025). He has served as General Chair/Co-Chair of the ICCES conference (2024–2025), holds Editor-in-Chief and Co-Editor-in-Chief roles (JPM; CMES), and is a Fellow/member of multiple academies and major professional societies (including the European Academy of Sciences and APS/IOP/IMechE/RAeS/RSC/IOM3).

Our plenary speaker will present “Mechanics of Polymer Materials and Architected Structures in Powder Bed Fusion”. Please click here to read the abstract