Bio

Samantha (Sam) Daly is a Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2007 and subsequently joined the University of Michigan, where she was on the faculty until 2016 prior to her move to UCSB. Her research interests lie at the intersection of experimental mechanics and scientific artificial intelligence, with the goal of advancing the understanding of deformation and failure mechanisms in advanced metallic and composite materials. She currently serves on the Executive Committees of the U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNC/TAM), the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM).

Bio

Eva Kanso is a professor and the Z.A. Kaprielian Fellow in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California, with courtesy appointment in the department of Physics and Astronomy. While at USC, Kanso served as a program director at the National Science Foundation (2021-2023) and held visiting positions at leading research institutions in the United States and France. Kanso was a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech (2003-2005). She received a Ph.D. (2003) and an M.S. (1999) degrees in Mechanical Engineering, and an M.A. (2002) in Mathematics, all from the University of California at Berkeley. She earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree (1997) from the American University of Beirut with distinction. Kanso’s research interests concern fundamental problems in the biophysics of cellular and subcellular processes and the physics of animal behavior, both at the individual and collective levels. A central theme in her work is the role of the mechanical environment, specifically the fluid medium and fluid-structure interactions, in shaping and driving biological functions. 

Abstract

This lecture develops a probabilistic framework for modeling and simulation in mechanics, spanning macroscopic to atomistic scales. It first introduces a parametric probabilistic approach based on random fields for the mechanics of materials, then a nonparametric formulation with nonlinear random operators to represent model-form uncertainties in complex mechanical systems. Next, it presents a statistical surrogate modeling strategy that relies on probabilistic learning on manifolds using transient anisotropic kernels, particularly suited to heterogeneous systems with limited training data. Finally, the lecture proposes a quantum-computing formulation for probabilistic learning and a physics-informed stochastic neural architecture on manifolds, opening new perspectives for multiscale modeling under uncertainty.

Bio

Christian Soize, Professor Emeritus at University Gustave Eiffel, has devoted his career to probability theory and mathematical statistics. After earning his PhD from the University “Pierre et Marie Curie” in 1979, he began as a researcher at ONERA and, in 2001, became Professor at the University of Marne-la Vallée (now University Gustave Eiffel). He has been recognized with several awards, including a prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1985), the IACM Award Computational Mechanics (2018), and the Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal from ASCE (2022). Prof. Soize has delivered numerous lectures and contributed extensively through publications and conference presentations. His research spans uncertainty quantification, stochastic modeling, probabilistic learning on manifolds, physics-based learning, and statistical inverse problems, with applications in computational science and engineering. More recently, he has worked on quantum computer formulation for probabilistic learning and supervised learning of random neural architectures on manifolds. He has also played an active role in scientific committees and conference organization, reflecting his commitment to advancing knowledge in the field.

Bio

Dr. Ricardo Vinuesa is an Associate Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan. He studied Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain), and he received his PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. His research combines numerical simulations and data-driven methods to understand, control and predict complex wall-bounded turbulent flows, such as the boundary layers developing around wings and urban environments. Dr. Vinuesa has received, among others, an ERC Consolidator Grant, the Harleman Lecture Award, the TSFP Kasagi Award, the MST Emerging Leaders Award, the Goran Gustafsson Award for Young Researchers, the IIT Outstanding Young Alumnus Award, the SARES Young Researcher Award and he is also a member of the Young Academy of Science of Spain.

Abstract

In recent years, architected materials and structures have gained significant popularity due to their ability to reach enhanced performance for use in multifunctional and multidisciplinary applications. Among numerous architected materials, those based on triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) exhibit a favorable integration of properties and the resulting performance merits. However, because of the complexities involved in the geometry representation and mechanical response of these structures, physics-based and data-driven modeling for TPMS engenders a set of challenges. To address the challenges, we developed a modeling framework for architected materials and structures focusing on sheet TPMS-based designs and applications involving protective structures that can mitigate the effect of extreme loading. To handle the geometric complexity and advanced nature of the mechanics involved, we developed a modeling framework based on Isogeometric Analysis (IGA). The key strength of IGA is the inherently tight integration between geometric design and physics-based modeling, which enables efficient simulation-based design of TPMS structures for a desired set of performance characteristics, before these are handed off to manufacturing (typically through additive manufacturing techniques) for further experimental testing and production. In this work we model TPMS structures that are fabricated using polymers, for which we envision several advantages. These advantages come with technical challenges, which we to address in this work. Constitutive modeling of polymeric materials presents a key challenge in this research. Typical stress-strain response obtained from standard tensile tests demonstrates a highly complicated constitutive relation, characterized by pseudo-elasticity at small strains, strain softening after “yielding”, strain hardening at large strains, and a strain-rate dependence across the entire regime of deformations. A comprehensive constitutive model that can capture this full spectrum of mechanical behavior at the material-point level is fundamental to understanding and accurately predicting the mechanical response at the structural level, which we simulate using IGA.

Bio

Yuri Bazilevs is the E. Paul Sorensen Professor in the School of Engineering at Brown University, where he is the inaugural Director of the Mechanics of Undersea Science and Engineering (MUSE) center and also served as the Lead and Executive Committee representative of the Mechanics of Solids and Structures group. Yuri’s research interests are in computational mechanics, with emphasis on the modeling and simulation in solids and structures, fluids, and their coupling in HPC environments. For his research contributions Yuri received many awards and honors, including the 2018 Walter E. Huber Research Prize from the ASCE, the 2020 Gustus L. Larson Award from the ASME, and the 2022 Computational Mechanics Award from the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM). He is included in the lists of Highly Cited Researchers, both in the Engineering (2015-2018) and Computer Science (2014-2019) categories. Yuri recently completed his service as the President of the US Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) and as the Chairman of the Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME. He currently serves on the US National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNCTAM) as a Member-at-Large, the Board of Directors of the USACM, and the Executive Council of the IACM.

Bio

Prof. Fehmi Cirak is Professor of Computational Mechanics at the University of Cambridge and Head of the Computational Structural Mechanics Laboratory (CSMLab). His current research is focused on statistical finite elements, isogeometric analysis, and emerging quantum-computing approaches. He holds a PhD from the University of Stuttgart. Before joining Cambridge, he spent seven years at Caltech, and his past affiliations include The Alan Turing Institute and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Bio

Chiara Daraio is the G. Bradford Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics at Caltech. Her work is focused on developing new materials with advanced mechanical and sensing properties, for application in robotics, wearable medical devices, and vibration absorption. She received her undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Universita’ Politecnica delle Marche, Italy (2001) and her M.S. (2003) and Ph.D. degrees (2006) in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, San Diego. She joined Caltech in fall of 2006 and was promoted full professor in 2010. From 2013 to 2016, she served as a Professor of Mechanics and Materials at ETH Zürich. She received a Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) from President Obama, a US Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER award. She was elected as a Sloan Research Fellow and selected by Popular Science magazine among the “Brilliant 10." Chiara also serves as a Director of Research Science at Meta Reality Lab Research.

Bio

Ken Kamrin received a BS in Engineering Physics with a minor in Mathematics at UC Berkeley in 2003, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics at MIT in 2008. Kamrin was an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences before joining the Mechanical Engineering faculty at MIT in 2011, where he was appointed the Class of 1956 Career Development Chair and later received a second faculty appointment in Applied Mathematics. After 13 years as a professor at MIT, Ken joined the UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering faculty in 2024. Kamrin’s research focuses on constitutive modeling and computational mechanics for large deformation processes, with interests spanning elastic and plastic solid modeling, granular mechanics, amorphous solid mechanics, and fluid-structure interaction. Kamrin’s honors include the 2010 Nicholas Metropolis Award from APS, the NSF CAREER Award in 2013, the 2015 Eshelby Mechanics Award for Young Faculty, the 2016 ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics Award, and the 2022 MacVicar Faculty Fellowship from MIT. He sat for three years on the Board of Directors of the Society of Engineering Science and serves as an associate editor for the International Journal of Solids and Structures, Granular Matter, and Computational Particle Mechanics. He is co-author of the recent undergraduate textbook Introduction to Mechanics of Solid Materials (Oxford).

Bio

Yashashree Kulkarni is the Bill D. Cook Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of Houston. She received her bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in India in 2001 and her Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Caltech in 2007. After spending two years as a postdoctoral scholar at University of California San Diego, she joined the University of Houston as an Assistant Professor in 2009. Her research focuses on understanding physical phenomena in materials science and biology using continuum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and multi-scale modeling. She served as the President of the Society of Engineering Science (SES) in 2024 and is currently on the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). She currently serves as an associate editor for ASME’s Applied Mechanics Reviews. She is the recipient of the 2010 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2017 Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award and the 2024 Mid-Career Centennial Award by the ASME Materials Division. She became an ASME Fellow in 2022. 

Bio

Ali Mani is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford in 2009. Prior to joining the faculty in 2011, he was a senior postdoctoral associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research group builds and utilizes large-scale high-fidelity numerical simulations, as well as methods of applied mathematics, to enable quantitative understanding and reduced-order modeling of transport processes that involve strong coupling with fluid flow and commonly involve turbulence or chaos. His current research includes turbulence modeling, data-driven methods for closure analysis, and computational simulation of multiphase flows.

Bio

Venkat Raman is the James Arthur Nicholls Collegiate Professor of Engineering and the Director of the Center for Prediction, Reasoning and Intelligence for Multiphysics Exploration (C-PRIME) at the University of Michigan. Venkat Raman received his PhD from Iowa State University in the Department of Chemical Engineering and was a NASA/Center for Turbulence Research Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. Before joining the University of Michigan, he was on the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. He is now a tenured professor at the University of Michigan in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Raman received an NSF CAREER award in 2008, a distinguished paper award at the International Combustion Symposium in 2013, and he held the Eli. H and Ramona Thornton Centennial Fellow in Engineering at UT Austin from 2013-2014. He is a recipient of the George J. Huebener, Jr. Research Excellence Award from the University of Michigan. He was elected Fellow of the Combustion Institute in 2022 and serves as an Associate Editor of Combustion and Flame and the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power. As a faculty member, Raman has advised/is currently advising 40 PhD/MS students and has published more than 175 peer-reviewed articles in archival journals and conferences. Raman’s research interests lie in the broad area of computational propulsion but have more recently focused on detonation engines and scramjet-based hypersonic propulsion.

Bio

Xuanhe Zhao is the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor at MIT. The mission of the MIT Zhao Lab is to advance science and technology at the intersection of humans and machines. Dr. Zhao is a Humboldt Research Awardee, Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) fellow. He received early career awards from NSF, ONR, ASME, SES, AVS, Adhesion Society, and Materials Today. To translate technologies into societal impacts, he co-founded and/or advised multiple startup companies, including SanaHeal, Magnendo, Sonologi, Orbit, and Pelva. More than 15 patents from the Zhao Lab have been licensed by companies and contributed to FDA-approved and widely used medical devices.