ECCOMAS AWARD FOR THE BEST Ph.D THESES OF 2012 ON COMPUTATIONAL METHODS IN APPLIED SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING

The meeting of the Evaluation Committee for the ECCOMAS award for the best PhD Theses 2012 was held on April 26th, 2013 at CIMNE, Barcelona. As a response to the call for tender, the ECCOMAS Member Associations nominated 17 theses. The Evaluation Committee was composed by Nils-Erik Wiberg (chairman), Olivier Allix, Andreas Boudouvis, Carsten Carstensen (due to sudden illness, he was assisting the committee remotely), Jacques Périaux (he was asked by the chairman to assist the committee to complement the assessment after knowing the absence of Prof. Carstensen) and Pedro Díez (secretary).

After a detailed discussion, a voting process was held in two phases. First, after a secret voting the number of theses was reduced from 17 to 8. In a second round, the number was reduced to 3 that ranked well above the rest. Then the committee ranked the 3 theses evaluating the different aspects of each and unanimously agreed on selecting the two winners.

The two winners are:

  • Dr. Erica Coenen (The Netherlands) for the thesis “Multi-scale modeling od damage and fracture
  • Dr. Andrea Manzoni (Switzerland) for the thesis “Reduced models for optimal control, shape optimization and inverse problems in haemodynamics

These theses are outstanding works in Computational Methods combining excellent knowledge of both theory and practice. The award decision was based on the originality of the theses, its scientific contents and the innovative numerical developments.

All nominees will be invited to participate at the third PhD Olympiad to be held in Bordeaux, France, in conjunction with the 2nd Young Investigators Conference (YIC2013) of ECCOMAS, from 02-06 September, 2013.

The list of finalists selected by the local-regional ECCOMAS Association is the following:

Author Title of the Thesis Association Country
Andres Bertoglio Beltran Forward and Inverse Problems in Fluid-structure Interaction. Application to Hemodynamics SMAI/GAMNI France
Nikolaos Cheimarios Multiscale simulation and systemic analysis of chemical vapor deposition processes GRACM Greece
Erica Coenen Multi-scale modelling of damage and fracture NMC Netherlands
Claudio Comis  Aerodynamic shape optimization of rotary wing aircraft components using advanced multiobjective  evolutionary algorithms GIMC-AIMETA Italy
Da Ronco
Filipe Xavier Costa Andrade Non-local modelling of Ductile Damage. Formulation and Numerical issues APMTAC Portugal
Elke Deckers A Wave-Based Approach for Steady-State Biot Models of Poroelastic Materials BNCM Belgium
Chun Hean Lee Development of a Cell Centred Upwind Finite Volume Algorithm for a New Conservation Law Formulation in Structural Dynamics ACME United Kingdom
Michael Karkulik On the Convergence and Quasi-optimality of Adaptive Boundary Element Methods GAMM Germany
Adam Klodowski Flexible Multibody Approach in Bone Strain Estimation during Physical Activity: Quantifying Osteogenic Potential NoACM North Europe
Andrea Manzoni Reduced Models for Optimal Control Shape Optimization and Inverse Problems in  SWICCOMAS Switzerland
Haemodynamics
Daniel Millán Point-set Manifold Processing for Computational Mechanics: thin shells, reduced order modeling, cell motility and molecular conformations SEMNI Spain
Miljan Milosevic Numerical Modelling of Diffusion within Composite Media SSCM Serbia
Karin Nachbagauer Development of shear and cross section deformable beam finite elements applied to large deformation and dynamics problems CEACM Central Europe
Bojana Rosic Variational Formulations and Functional Approximation Algorithms in Stochastic Plasticity of Materials GACM Germany
Romain Rumpler Efficient Finite Element Approach for Structural-Acoustic Applications including 3D Modelling of Sound Absorbing Porous Materials CSMA France
Marta Serafin Application of hp-adaptive finite element method to two-scale computation PACM Poland
Giordano Tierra Chica Numerical Analysis and Simulations for Fluid Mechanics and Phase-field Models SEMA Spain