Invited Lectures

	Embedding slender structures in continua: Theory, numerical methods, and applications Ignacio Romero, Technical University of Madrid Ignacio Romero is Professor of Solid Mechanics at the Industrial Engineering School of the Technical University of Madrid and Senior Researcher at IMDEA Materials Institute, where he leads the Computational Solid Mechanics group. Prof. Romero obtained his Engineering degree from the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid in 1995, an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (1997), and a PhD from UC Berkeley (2001). He has been a Fulbright scholar and a recipient of a “Ramón y Cajal” Grant from the Spanish government. In 2011, he was awarded the 2011 Zienkiewicz medal from the Institution of Civil Engineering (UK) for his contributions to computational mechanics. His research interests include computational nonlinear solid mechanics, nonlinear structural mechanics, multiscale material modeling, and fluid/solid interaction. He has published 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He is the primary developer of MUESLI, a publicly available library for material models.
	Parametric Model Order Reduction in the Multi-Scale Material Setting Karen Veroy-Grepl, Eindhoven University of Technology Karen Veroy-Grepl is a Professor of Computational Science in the Centre for Analysis, Scientific Computing and Applications at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).  Her research interests include numerical methods for partial differential equations, model order reduction, and uncertainty quantification.  Her current research focuses on the development of reduced order modelling techniques for multi-scale simulations in mechanics and on data assimilation and optimal experimental design.  Karen received her bachelor’s degree from the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, and her graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  After two years in industry, she returned to academia in 2009 as a research group leader, then junior professor, and eventually professor at RWTH Aachen University.  Veroy-Grepl was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019, and joined TU/e in 2020.  She serves on the editorial board of four international journals.
	From equilibrium to self-tuning oscillations of variable-length elastic rods, with an excursion on flat punch frictionless contact Francesco Dal Corso, University of Trento After earning a PhD in Materials and Structural Engineering at the University of Trento, Italy, he had a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, UK. Francesco Dal Corso is currently an Associate Professor of Solid and Structural Mechanics at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of the University of Trento, Italy. His research activity is devoted to the Mechanical behaviour of Solid and Structures. In particular, he dealt with problems related to the localization of deformation, plasticity, large deformations, homogenization, higher-order continua, stress concentrations and singularities, contact mechanics, configurational mechanics, and stability. He has co-authored more than 50 journal papers. He has co-guest edited a Special Issue of the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids in 2020 and he is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering – Solid and Structural Mechanics section since 2021. Website.
	Hamiltonian GAN Christine Allen-Blanchette, Princeton University Christine Allen-Blanchette is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Center for Statistics and Machine Learning at Princeton University. They hold an associated faculty appointment in the Computer Science department and an affiliation with Robotics at Princeton. Before joining the faculty, they were a Princeton Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow mentored by Naomi Leonard. They completed their PhD in Computer Science and MSE in Robotics at the University of Pennsylvania, and their BS degrees in Mechanical and Computer Engineering at San Jose State University. Among their awards are the Princeton Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training award, and GEM Fellowship sponsored by the Adobe Foundation.
	Geometric numerical integration for data-driven system identification Christian Offen, Paderborn University Christian Offen studied at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and earned his doctoral degree in Mathematics from Massey University, New Zealand, in 2020 with a thesis titled “Analysis of Hamiltonian boundary value problems and symplectic integration”. Since 2020 he has been working at Paderborn University, Germany, combining data-driven methods with numerical analysis and geometry. Christian Offen’s research awards include a phd thesis award (Dean’s List of Exceptional Thesis) as well as the Hatherton Award 2019 of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
	Advanced material modeling for 3D beams Oliver Weeger, TU Darmstadt Prof. Dr. Oliver Weeger is a Full Professor for Cyber-Physical Simulation with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany. He graduated in Techno-Mathematics from TU Munich in 2011 and obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from TU Kaiserslautern in 2015. Before joining TU Darmstadt in 2019, he had been working at the Singapore University of Technology and Design as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Assistant Professor. His research focuses on the development of advanced computational methods, modeling and optimization approaches for nonlinear, multiscale, and multiphysics problems in engineering. Recent contributions include physics-augmented machine learning methods for material modeling, isogeometric analysis methods and design workflows in structural mechanics, as well as process and product modeling and optimization in additive manufacturing.
	1D models for slender hyperelastic structures based on a two-scale approach Claire Lestringant, Sorbonne Université Dr. Claire Lestringant is a lecturer in Sorbonne Université in Paris. She received her PhD in Mechanics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris) in 2017. Before being appointed to Sorbonne Université, she worked as a postdoc in Prof Kochmann’s group at ETH Zurich, and as a lecturer in the University of Cambridge (UK). Helen Le Clézio, ETH Zürich After receiving her PhD in 2024 from the department of mechanical and process engineering at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Dr. Helen Le Clézio is now a postdoc in Prof. Dennis Kochmann’s lab at ETH Zurich.