Gianluca Cusatis is the President of Cusatis Computational Services (CCS) Inc. and a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. He received both his Laurea and PhD degrees in structural engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy).

His teaching focuses on structural mechanics and mechanics of materials within civil engineering curricula. His research spans experimental, computational, and applied mechanics, with emphasis on heterogeneous and quasi-brittle infrastructure materials. He is internationally recognized for his work on constitutive modeling of concrete through the Lattice Discrete Particle Model (LDPM), a widely adopted framework for simulating failure of strain-softening materials. His recent research also includes the development of waterless concrete for Martian construction.

Cusatis is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Concrete Institute (ACI) where has served in several leadership roles, including member of the ASCE EMI Board of Directors, Chair of ACI Committees 446 and 209, President of IA-ConCreep, and Treasurer of IA-FraMCoS. He was elected ASCE EMI Fellow in 2018 and ACI Fellow in 2025.

Jan Eliáš is a faculty member at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at Brno University of Technology in Czechia, where he also earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees. He serves as vice-chair of the Institute of Structural Mechanics at the same institution. For several years, he has been teaching both fundamental and advanced courses in structural mechanics for civil engineering students, as well as introductory courses in reliability and statistical methods. During his career, Jan has completed several year-long research stays: in 2007–2008 with Henrik Stang, in 2009–2010 with Zdeněk P. Bažant as a Fulbright scholar, and in 2020–2021 with Gianluca Cusatis.

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His research focuses on the mechanics of solids in both transient and steady states, with particular emphasis on concrete deterioration and fracture. He is engaged in numerical mechanics and the development of nonlinear static and dynamic solvers. Jan also contributes to the study of how random inputs propagate through inelastic mechanical systems, employing Monte Carlo integration and design‑of‑experiments approaches. Throughout most of his career, he has been involved in the development of discrete methods—particularly LDPM—which has recently led him to concentrate on their homogenization.

Lei Shen is an Associate Professor at Hohai University (China). He obtained his

Ph.D. degree in Hydraulic Structure Engineering from Hohai University in 2018. Hewas a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University from 2016 to 2018. He won the 'Young Scholar Award' from the International Association of Fracture Mechanics for Concrete and Concrete Structures in 2019.

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His teaching focuses on computational mechanics and its applications in Hydraulic Structure Engineering. His research spans multi-physics coupled problems of concrete under extreme temperature conditions, such as thermal spalling at high temperatures and freeze-thaw damage at low temperatures. His recent research also includes the simulation of 3D-printed concrete using a DEM-SPH coupled method.

He has led research projects including the General Program and the Young

Scientists Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the

Special Funding Project from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.

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He is a member of the Academic Committee of the Jiangsu Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and a member of the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).