ECCOMAS AWARD FOR THE BEST Ph.D THESES OF 2014 ON COMPUTATIONAL METHODS IN APPLIED SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING

The meeting of the Evaluation Committee for the ECCOMAS award for the best PhD theses 2014 was held on May 8th, 2015 at CIMNE, Barcelona. As a response to the call for tender, the ECCOMAS Member Associations nominated 18 theses. The Evaluation Committee was composed by Nils-Erik Wiberg (chairman), Ilaria Perugia, Marek Behr, Umberto Perego 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 18 to 8. In a second round, the number was reduced to 4 with 2 theses that were ranked well above the rest. Then the committee discussed these 4 theses, evaluating the different aspects of each and unanimously agreed on selecting the two winners that are precisely the ones ranked above.

The two winners are:

  • Dr. Annabelle Collin (France) for the thesis “Asymptotic analysis in cardiac electrophysiolog! y. Applications in modeling and data assimilation.
  • Dr. Pieter Coulier (Belgium) for the thesis “The numerical solution of large scale dynamic soil-structure interaction problems

These theses are outstanding works in Computational Methods combining excellent knowledge of both theory and practice, with special insight in the implementation and computational aspects. The award decision was based on the originality of the theses, their scientific content and the innovative numerical developments.

All nominees will be invited to participate at the next PhD Olympiad to be held in Aachen, Germany, in the framework of the ECCOMAS Young Investigators Conference 2015 – YIC 2015, 20-23 July 2015.

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

Author Title of the Thesis Association Country
Olivier Goury Computational Time Savings in Multiscale Fracture Mechanics using Model Order Reduction ACME United Kingdom
Diogo Neto Numerical Simulation of Frictional Contact Problems using Nagata Patches in Surface Smoothing APMTAC Portugal
Pieter Coulier The Numerical Solution of Large-scale Dynamic Soil–Structure Interaction Problems BNCTAM Belgium
Florian Toth Static and Dynamic Modelling of Lightweight Floating Platforms Supported by Flexible Air Chambers CEACM Austria
Nicole Spillane Robust Domain Decomposition Methods for Symmetric Positive Definite Problems CSMA France
Meng-Meng Zhou Computational Simulation of Soil Freezing: Multiphase Modeling and Strength Upscaling GACM Germany
Anika Radermacher Proper orthogonal decomposition-based model reduction in nonlinear solid mechanics GAMM Germany
Annabelle Collin Asymptotic Analysis in Cardiac Electrophysiology. Applications to Modeling and to Data Assimilation GAMNI France
Giulia Scalet  Shape Memory and Elastoplastic Materials: from Constitutive and Numerical to Fatigue Modeling GIMC-AIMETA Italy
Manolis Georgioudakis Stochastic Analysis and Optimum Design of Structures Subjected to Fracture GRACM Greece
Mark Wasserman Multigrid Acceleration of Turbulent Reacting Flow Simulations IACMM Israel
Nicodemus Banagaaya Index-aware Model Order Reduction Methods for DAEs NMC Netherlands
Ismet Baran Modelling the Pultrusion Process of Off Shore Wind Turbine Blades  NoACM North Europe
Wojciech Adamczyk Modelling of the Oxy-fuel Combustion Process within the Circulating Fluidized Bed PACM Poland
Samuele Rubino Numerical modeling of turbulence by Richardson number-based and VMS models SEMA Spain
Narges Dialami Thermo-mechanical Analysis of Welding Processes SEMNI Spain
Marco Panzeri Data Assimilation for Complex Subsurface Flow Fields SIMAI Italy
David S. Kammer Slip Fronts at Fictional Interfaces: A Numerical and Theoretical Study SWICCOMAS Switzerland