The meeting of the Evaluation Committee for the ECCOMAS award for the best PhD theses in 2018 was held on April 26th, 2019 at CIMNE, Barcelona. As an answer to the call for tender, the ECCOMAS member associations nominated 17 theses. The Evaluation Committee was composed by Nils-Erik Wiberg (chairman), Karen Veroy-Grepl, Gernot Beer, Roberto Verzicco 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 7. In a second round, the number was reduced to 4 theses that were ranked well above the rest. Then the committee discussed the merits of these 4 theses, evaluating the different aspects of each and unanimously agreed on selecting among them two winners.
The two winners are:
- Dr. Brian Staber (France) for the thesis “Stochastic analysis, simulation and identification of hyperelastic constitutive equations”.
- Dr. Yasin Toparlar (The Netherlands) for the thesis “A multiscale analysis of the urban heat island effect: From city averaged temperatures to the energy demand of individual buildings”.
These theses are outstanding works in Computational Methods in Applied Sciences combining excellent knowledge of both theory and practice, with special insight in the fundamental and computational aspects. The panel has appreciated the complementary on the focus of the scientific contributions: the first (in alphabetical order) developing new mathematical methodologies, algorithms, their analysis and their application to relevant problems, and the latter using with outstanding rigor the tools pertaining to our community in an original problem with relevant social impact. Both, the two winners are pieces of research that extend the frontiers of the fields of ECCOMAS, and open our community to new problems and methodologies. The award decision was based on the relevance of the topics, the originality of the theses, their scientific content and the innovative numerical developments. Moreover, both theses are very well written and meticulously presented.
The list of finalists selected by the local-regional ECCOMAS Association is the following:
| Author | Title of the theses | Local Association | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viacheslav Balobanov | Computational Structural Mechanics within strain gradient elasticity: mathematical formulations and isogeometric analysis for metamaterial design | NOACM | Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Iceland |
| Daniel Barba | Segregation-Assisted Creep in Nickel-based Superalloys: experiments, theory and Modelling | Ukacm | United Kingdom |
| Bart Blockmans | Model reduction of contact problems in flexible multibody dynamics | BNCTAM | Belgium |
| Cipriano Escalante Sanchez | Mathematical and numerical modelling of dispersive water waves | SEMA | Spain |
| Camilla Fiorini | Sensitivity analysis for non linear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws | GAMNI/SMAI | France |
| Elena Gaburro | Well balanced Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian Finite Volume schemes on moving nonconforming meshes for non-conservative Hyperbolic systems | GIMC/AIMETA | Italy |
| Tomasz Gajewski | Computer assisted medical decision in angioplasty vascular intervention | PACM | Poland |
| Osman Gültekin | Computational Inelasticity of Fibrous Biological Tissues with a Focus on Viscoelasticity, Damage and Rupture | CEACM | Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, The Czech Republic |
| Friederike Hellwig | Adaptive Discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin Finite-Element-Methods | GAMM | Germany |
| Max Hodapp | On flexible Green function methods for atomistic/continuum coupling | SWICCOMAS | Switzerland |
| Arnau Ribas | Numerical Simulation of Aeroacoustics using the Variational Multiscale Method. Application to the problem of human phonation | SEMNI | Spain |
| Mara Scussolini | Inverse Problems in Data-driven Multiscale Systems Medicine: Application to Cancer Physiology | SIMAI | Italy |
| Filipe Miguel Soares Pereira | Towards Predictive Scale-Resolving Simulations of Turbulent External Flows | APMTAC | Portugal |
| Chatzieleftheriou Stavros | Contribution to force field modeling & energy minimization of nanostructures | GRACM | Greece |
| Johanna Waimann | Variational modeling of irreversible effects in polycrystalline shape memory alloys | GAMC | Germany |