Mechanics of Meta and Biomaterials – Combining in situ Experimentation and Machine Learning Modeling
Professor Horacio D. Espinosa
Biosketch: Horacio D. Espinosa is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the Director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program at the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from Brown University in 1992. Espinosa has made contributions in the areas of deformation and failure of materials, design of micro- and nano-systems, in situ microscopy characterization of nanomaterials, and microfluidics for single cell manipulation and analysis. He has published over 300 technical papers on these topics. Espinosa received several awards including the Prager Medal from the Society of Engineering Science, the ASME Drucker Medal, TMS William Nix Medal, and from the Society for Experimental Mechanics, the Murray, Sia Nemat Nasser, and P.S. Theocaris Medals. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), foreign member of Academia Europaea, Athens Academy, the European Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of AAAS, ASME, SEM, and AAM. He was the President of the Society of Engineering Science in 2012 and is currently the past chair of the US National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and a member of the IUTAM General Assembly.
Flexible Ultrasound Technology: from Biomedical Applications to Industry
Professor Xue Feng
Professor Xue Feng is a full professor in Tsinghua University. He received PhD degree in solid mechanics from Tsinghua University in 2003 and then worked as a postdoc at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and California Institute of Technology. He is the founding director of the Laboratory of Flexible Electronics Technology at Tsinghua University, and the director of the Institute of Flexible Electronics Technology of Tsinghua, Zhejiang. He is the fellow of Society of Engineering Science (SES Fellow), the fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME Fellow) and the fellow of Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM Fellow). He served or is currently serving as an (assoc.) editor/ an editorial board member of several journals, including Applied Mechanics Review, Wearable Electronics, npj Flexible Electronics, et al. Feng’s research focuses on solids mechanics and the design, fabrication and mass manufacturing of flexible integrated devices. He has published more than 300 papers, and is an inventor on over 200 patents. Prof. Feng’s list of honors and academic awards includes ASME Worcester Reed Warner Award (2025), ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Division Award (2024), ASME Melville Medal (2023), Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Innovation Award (2022), etc.
Comparison and fusion of subset-based smart-DIC and deep learning-based DIC
Professor Bing Pan
Dr. Bing Pan is a Full Professor in the School of Aeronautic Science & Engineering at Beihang University (BUAA). His research interests mainly focus on advanced optical metrology and its applications in experimental mechanics, especially on novel/improved digital image/volume correlation methods for surface and internal deformation measurement of solid materials and structures across diverse temporal and spatial scales, as well as innovative photomechanics techniques for extreme environments. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed international journal articles, with a total citation over 22,000. Prof. Pan received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (China) in 2019 and the Hetenyi Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), Inc. in 2018. He has delivered over 20 plenary and keynote lectures at leading international and domestic conferences, including the SEM Annual Conference (2012, 2015), Photomechanics 2018, iDICs 2018, ISOT 2018, and icOPEN (2013, 2022).
Testing mechanical and bioinspired metamaterial composites under environmental conditions: results, challenges and opportunities
Professor Fabrizio Scarpa
Prof. Fabrizio Scarpa is the Materials Theme Leader at the Bristol Composites Institute of the University of Bristol, UK. He obtained his degree of Aeronautical Engineering at the Politecnico of Turin (Italy) in 1993, and a PhD in Machine Design at the same institution in 1997. He started to work in the same year as postdoc at the University of Sheffield, where he then became Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Dynamics. In 2005 he moved to the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Bristol, where he was awarded a Personal Chair in 2011. I Over the past three decades, he has been developing auxetics and metamaterials for shape morphing and multifunctional applications, publishing over 530 papers. Professor Fabrizio Scarpa has served as both Principal and Co-Investigator on projects funded by the EU, UKRI, Innovate UK, Dstl, and ONR Global, managing a combined budget of over £20.5 million. His research is currently centred on the design of metamaterials using advanced techniques such as 3D and 4D printing, as well as additive manufacturing, with a focus on integrating nanomaterials, biobased composites, and natural fibre components at the interface between sustainable materials and synthetic biology. He acted as Coordinator for the FP6 CHISMACOMB project (€3M, 2004–2008) and India/UK/USA DST-UKRI/NSF metamaterials projects. He was also Workpackage Leader for the seventeen-partners FP7 SSUCHY project (https://www.ssuchy.eu/project/) and lead of the Mechanical Metamaterials Special Interest Group within the EPSRC Metamaterials Network from 2021 to 2022. Professor Scarpa’s work on metamaterials has also been supported by companies like Rolls-Royce plc, Safran and agencies like the UK MoD, French AID and US ONR Global As an ERC H2020 Advanced Grant Investigator (NEUROMETA), he is pioneering the development of mechanical biobased neuromorphic metamaterials, coordinating efforts with collaborators from Brazil, India, Algeria and Australia..