Keynote Speakers (In alphabetical order)

Professor James S. Davidson

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Auburn University, USA

Professor Jim Davidson is the Gottlieb Professor of Structural Engineering at Auburn University, USA. His technical specialties are in the areas of structural engineering and structural mechanics, with an emphasis on advanced computational methods for analyzing structures subjected to large strains at high strain rates. Dr. Davidson’s research and industry experiences are varied and include sponsorship from a broad range of US agencies and industry organizations. He has served as chair or member of more than 100 PhD and Masters student committees, authored and co-authored over 50 technical journal publications, and presented his research at approximately 100 conferences around the world. He currently serves on several conferences and editorial boards, including the International Journal of Protective Structures and the International Association of Protective Structures.

Dr. Takeshi Iwamoto

Academy of Science and Technology,
Hiroshima University, Japan

Associate Professor Dr. Iwamoto completed the undergraduate program provided by the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering at Kobe University in 1993. After that, he got advanced in the Master’s program at the Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University. As soon as finishing the program in 1995, he has started his academic life as a research associate at School of Engineering, Hiroshima University. In 2000, he received the degree of Doctor (Engineering) from Graduate School of Natural Sciences at Kobe University through the RONPAKU system, which is the Japanese original system to obtain the Ph.D. degree from Japanese universities through the submission of a dissertation without matriculating a doctoral course, under a supervision of Prof. Yoshihiro Tomita. In 2005, he joined the Laboratoire de Physique et Mécanique des Matériaux, Université de Metz in France as a visiting scholar for one year. Then, he found an upgraded position as an assistant professor in 2007 and promoted as an associate professor in 2009 at Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University. His research interests are thermo-mechanical behaviour of phase transforming ferrous materials at higher strain rate studied by computational and experimental approaches including impact and dynamic testing, constitutive modelling, etc. As well as his major work, modifications of impact testing methods belong to his curiosity. Around 80 papers as a co-author were published in scientific journals with peer reviews. He received 6 awards from Japanese Societies such as Japan Society for Technology of Plasticity and The Society of Materials Science, Japan. He was invited professors in France and China.

Professor Bassam A. Izzuddin

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Imerial College London, UK

Professor Bassam Izzuddin is a Professor of Computational Structural Mechanics and Head of the Computational Structural Mechanics group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London. He is also the founder and developer of ADAPTIC, an adaptive static and dynamic structural analysis program for high-fidelity modelling of steel, concrete, composite and masonry structures. His research focuses on modelling whole buildings and masonry arch bridges under service and extreme loading conditions, such as due to earthquake, fire and blast. A key feature of his work has been extensive national and international collaboration with fellow academics and leading players in the structural engineering industry, leveraging ADAPTIC to set the international agenda on several fronts. He has also made determined steps towards developing simplified design-oriented assessment techniques, including pioneering work on structural robustness, and proposing analogies which enhance the understanding by engineers of complex nonlinear structural phenomena.

Professor Yulong Li

Department of Aeronautical Structure Engineering,
Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), China

Professor Yulong Li is the Dean of Civil Aviation School and a Chair Professor in Department of Aeronautical Structure Engineering in Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), China. He received his Ph.D. degree in Solid Mechanics from NPU in 1992 and became a Professor in 1995. From 1996 to 2000 he worked as a post-doctor and subsequently a visiting scholar in University of California San Diego and Johns Hopkins University (JHU). He was a visiting professor of Tokyo University of Science in Japan, a visiting professor of Université Pierre et Marie Curie of France and a visiting professor of The Johns Hopkins University of USA. His research interests include dynamic response and failure of structures under impact loading, constitutive relationship for materials, experimental techniques in impact dynamics, as well as numerical simulation of materials and structures under impact. He has authored more than 400 papers, as well as 20 patents and 4 book chapters. He is current Sub-Committee Member for the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Chinese Society of Mechanics. He is Editor Board Member for several journals including J. Dynamic Behavior of Materials, Int.J. Impact Engineering, Acta Mechanica Sinica, etc.

Professor Guoxing Lu

School of Engineering,
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Professor Guoxing Lu is President of International Society of Impact Engineering and Director of Impact Engineering Laboratory at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Professor Lu obtained his PhD in 1989 from the University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor CR Calladine (FRS, FREng). After one year post-doctoral research at Cambridge, he worked as a faculty member at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and presently is Professor of Impact Engineering. His research interests are energy absorption of novel structures and materials, mechanical properties of materials at high strain rates, impact mechanics and most recently origami structures and metamaterials. He has ~300 journal publications and one monograph co-authored with Professor Tongxi (TX) Yu, Energy Absorption of Structures and Materials, Elsevier, 2003. He has 12500 citations with an H-index of 58. He is an Associate Editor of International Journal of Impact Engineering and a member of editorial board of International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, Thin-Walled Structures, Composites B, Scientific Reports, Journal of Sandwich Structures and Materials and others. He is a Fellow of Royal Aeronautical Society (UK) and Associate Dean Research, School of Engineering at Swinburne.

Professor Gerald Nurick

Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Cape Town, South Africa

Professor Nurick has been working in the field of impact dynamics for over 35 years. During this period, he has supervised over 70 Post-Doctoral, PhD and MSc students, who are now spread around the world. Professor Nurick has served on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Impact Engineering, the Latin American Journal of Solids and Structures, Journal of Results in Engineering, and the International Journal of Protective Structures. In 2016 and 2022 (six year review period) Professor Nurick was awarded an A-Rating from the NRF (National Research Foundation) of South Africa. A-rating is given to researchers who are unequivocally recognised by their peers as leading international scholars in their field for the high quality and impact of their research outputs. At the Assembly of the ISIE (International Society of Impact Engineering) in 2016, Professor Nurick was one of the inaugural group of five elected as Honorary Members of ISIE for lifetime significant contributions to and the development and growth of Impact Engineering activities.

Professor Nurick is a Fellow of the University of Cape Town, Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineers, Honorary Fellow of South African Institution of Mechanical Engineering, Honorary Member of the International Society of Impact Engineering and a Life Member of the Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

Professor Tongxi Yu

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR

Professor Tongxi Yu (T.X. Yu) is an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Before his retirement in July 2010, he was Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Vice-President for Research & Development and the Dean of Fok Ying Tung Graduate School at HKUST. He got his PhD from Cambridge University in 1983. In 1984-1991, he was a professor and the Director of the Solid Mechanics Division at Peking University. In 1991-1995, he worked as a Reader at UMIST, Manchester, UK. After joined HKUST in 1995 as professor of mechanical engineering, he served as Associate Dean of Engineering (1998-2000) and the Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering (2002-2007). After his retirement, he continued to serve HKUST as Senior Advisor to President (or to VP-RD) on part-time basis and as Acting Dean of Engineering (2015-2016). In various time periods, he also worked with more than 10 universities in China, Singapore and Australia as honorary/guest professor.

Professor Yu’s research interest has been focused on impact dynamics, engineering plasticity, energy absorption, textile and cellular materials, and nano-composites. In these fields, he has published 5 textbooks, 3 scientific monographs (all published in both English and Chinese), 420 journal papers, 250 international conference papers and 8 patents. The total citation is 15,000+ with H-index being 60. Over many years, he played core editorial roles in International Journal of Mechanical Sciences and International Journal of Impact Engineering. He is Fellow of ASME, IMechE and HKIE, as well as Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. Due to his outstanding academic achievement, he was awarded Doctor of Science (ScD) by Cambridge University in 1995, and got the China Higher Education Science and Technology Award (1st Class) in 2001. In 2021, HKUST awarded him a prestigious University Honorary Fellowship.