Born and educated in Prague, Professor Zdenek P. Ba%zant joined Northwestern University in 1969, where he has been W. P. Murphy Professor since 1990 and McCormick Institute Professor since 2002. He has served as the President of the Society of Engineering Science (1993), and was the founding President (1991-93) of the International Association of Fracture Mechanics of Concrete Structures and the founding President (2001-2002) of the International Association of Concrete Creep and Durability Mechanics. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Freudenthal Medal in 2018, the ASME Medal in 2017, and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art in 2016. He is the author of six books and is generally regarded as the world leader in research on scaling in the mechanics of solids. Dr. Jia-Liang Le is a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He earned his B. Eng. (First Class Honors) and M. Eng. from the National University of Singapore, and a Ph.D. in structural engineering from Northwestern University. He is a registered professional engineer and a member of ASCE, ACI, and SES. His research interests include fracture mechanics, probabilistic mechanics, scaling, computational mechanics, and structural reliability. He received the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, the EMI Leonardo da Vinci Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Young Investigator Medal for the Society of Engineering Science. Dr. Marco Salviato is an associate professor in the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington. He earned his B.Sc. (First Class Honors) and M.Sc (First Class Honors) in mechanical engineering, and a Ph.D in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Padova. He is a registered professional engineer and a member of ASCE, ASME, SES, ASEE, and ASC. His research interests include computational modelling of composites and nanocomposites, integrated computational materials engineering, and stochastic finite element modelling. He is the recipient of the Haythornthwaite Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the DEStech Young Composites Researcher Award from the American Society for Composites.
