John Banhart (TU Berlin, Germany)

In-situ X-ray Tomoscopy: Insights into the evolution of liquid aluminium alloy foams  

John Banhart  studied Physics at the University of Munich and obtained a degree in Physical Chemistry from the same university in 1989. He joined the Fraunhofer Institute in Bremen in 1991 and worked in the field of cellular materials. In 2002 he became a professor of Materials Science at the TU Berlin and head of a research department at the Hahn-Meitner Institute (now Helmholtz-Centre Berlin). His current focus of research lies on lightweight and cellular materials and on imaging with X-rays and neutrons. Throughout his scientific career, he registered 11 patents, published more than 312 articles in SCI journals, 152 conference proceedings and book contributions, 54 miscellaneous publications, and 16 editorships for books and journal issues. He has scientific papers in ISI international journals with over 6556 citations. Moreover, he is the founder and main organizer of the MetFoam series conference (International Conference on Porous Metals and Metallic foams), started in 1999 (at IFAM, Bremen) and taking place every two years.

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Lovre Krstulović-Opara (University of Split, Croatia)

Infrared thermography as the tool for tracing plastification of cellular materials and composite structures

Lovre Krstulović-Opara  is a Professor of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture at University of Split, Croatia. He received his Dipl.Ing. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Zagreb in 1994, got the teaching assistant position and obtained his M.Sc. degree in 1997. After this he joined the research group of Prof. Peter Wriggers, first at TU Darmstadt, and then at University of Hannover where in 2000 he received his Dr.-Ing. degree. In 2001 he moved to University of Split, and in 2015 he was elected to Full professor with permanent position. His research interests include numerical methods in contact mechanics, experimental mechanics, non-destructive testing and infrared thermography. He is certified expert in several NDT methods. Currently he is the president of the Croatian Society of Mechanics.

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M. Emília Rosa (IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal)

Cork: a natural cellular material

Maria Emília Rosa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico. She received his B.Sc. degree in Metallurgical  Engineering at the Technical University of Lisbon in 1980 and obtained her PhD degree in Materials Engineering at the same university in 1990. She was a member of the  Portuguese research group, headed by Prof M. Amaral Fortes, that, in 1985, initiated the work on cellular materials. In 1989, she received, with Prof M. Amaral Fortes, the Gulbenkian Science and Technology Award for their work on cork. Her main research interests focus on structure and mechanical properties of cellular materials, in general, and of cork, in particular. She has participated in several research projects and published more than one hundred papers in journals and conference proceedings.

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Matej Vesenjak (University of Maribor, Portugal)

Mechanical behaviour of celular metals

Matej Vesenjak is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at University of Maribor, Slovenia. He received his B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maribor in 2001 and obtained his Ph.D. degree at the same university in 2006. From 2012 he is a visiting professor at the Kumamoto University, Japan and was also a visiting professor at the Okinawa National College of Technology, Japan. His research interests focus on porous and cellular materials, mechanical and geometrical characterization of advanced materials, computational mechanics, crashworthiness and fluid-structure interaction. He has been awarded with numerous scholarships and fellowships and has gained professional experience at several universities and institutions all over the world. His bibliography contains more than 450 entries.

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Renato Natal Jorge (FEUP, University of Porto, Portugal)

On the forming of sandwich shells with closed-cell foam cores

Renato Natal Jorge is graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Porto (UP – www.up.pt), Portugal, since 1987. In 1991, he obtained the Master degree in Structural Mechanics, also at University of Porto. In 1999, he obtained the PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from the same University. He was a member (2011-2014) of the executive board of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto. Between 2007 and 2011, he is the Scientific Coordinator of the Design and Experimental Validation Research Unit of IDMEC. Furthermore, also since 2008, he has been Associate Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (DEMec) of the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto and he is Deputy Director of DEMec. His main research areas include Computational Mechanics, Biomedical Engineering, Biomechanics and Mechanobiology. He has been supervisor and co-supervisor of several Master and PhD Thesis. He is co-author of more than 160 papers in international journals and he collaborates in more than 450 papers in international conferences. His h-index is 30 (Scopus). He is co-editor of 12 international books and guest-editor of several special issues of international journals. He has been evolved in several projects, both as researcher and as scientific coordinator. Additionally, he has been serving as a reviewer of several international journals, such as the Journal of Biomechanics, Annals of Biomedical Engineering, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, Finite Elements in Analysis and Design, International Journal of Urogynaecology, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering.

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