Professor Subra Suresh is the Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering (on leave) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since October 2010, he has been serving as the 13th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a six-year term. Prior to assuming this position, Professor Suresh was MIT’s dean of engineering. As a mechanical engineer who later became interested in materials science and biology, Suresh has done pioneering work in the biomechanics of blood cells under the influence of diseases such as malaria. From 2000 to 2006, Suresh served as the head of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He joined MIT in 1993 as the R.P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and held joint faculty appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering, as well as the Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Suresh holds a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, a master’s degree from Iowa State University, and earned his ScD from MIT in 1981.

Professor Alberto Carpinteri has been the Chair of Structural Mechanics, and the Director of the Fracture Mechanics Laboratory at the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), since 1986. During this period, he has held different positions of responsibility, among which: Head of the Department of Structural Engineering (1989-1995), and Founding Member and Director of the Post-graduate School in Structural Engineering (1990-). He has also been the President of the National Research Institute of Metrology in Italy, INRIM (2011-2013). He was a Visiting Scientist at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, USA (1982-1983), and is a Fellow of different Academies and Institutions. Prof. Carpinteri is the President of the International Congress on Fracture, ICF (2009-2013), and was the President of the European Structural Integrity Society, ESIS (2002-2006), the International Association of Fracture Mechanics for Concrete and Concrete Structures, lA-FraMCoS (2004-2007), the Italian Group of Fracture, IGF (1998-2005). He was a Member of the Congress Committee of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, IUTAM (2004-2012), and is a Member of the Executive Board of the Society for Experimental Mechanics, SEM (2012-2014), a Member of the Editorial Board of thirteen international journals, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Meccanica”, and the author or the editor of over 750 publications, of which more than 300 are papers in refereed international journals and 43 are books. Prof. Carpinteri received numerous Honours and Awards, among which: the Robert L’Hermite Medal from RILEM (1982), the Griffith Medal from ESIS (2008), the Swedlow Memorial Lecture Award from ASTM (2011), and the Paul Paris Gold Medal from ICF (2013).

Professor Yiu-Wing Mai obtained his undergraduate education and postgraduate research training in mechanical engineering at the University of Hong Kong, China. He previously worked in the US (University of Michigan and NIST), the UK (Imperial College) and Hong Kong (HKUST, CityU, HKU and PolyU). He holds a University Chair in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney. Prof Mai’s major current research interest is on polymer nanocomposites. His published work has contributed to the development of asbestos-free fibre cements, testing protocols for fracture toughness of polymer films and improved composites manufacturing processes with global impact. Professor Mai is Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering.