Pinar Acar is an Associate Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Virginia Tech. Her research interests focus on multi-scale materials modeling, materials design, design optimization, uncertainty quantification, and machine learning. She received her Ph.D. degree in 2017 from the Aerospace Engineering Department of the University of Michigan. During her Ph.D., she developed various computational methods for studying the multi-scale modeling and design of metals. Dr. Acar is the winner of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award, the Dean’s Awards of Excellence: Faculty Fellow and Outstanding New Assistant Professor Awards at Virginia Tech, Frontiers of Materials Award by The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), and the International Amelia Earhart Fellowship, as well as the recipient of the best paper awards at AIAA SciTech Forum 2022 and 2025. She is an elected member of technical committees in various professional societies, including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), The U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), and The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Surya Kalidindi is a Regents Professor, and Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Chair Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia, USA with joint appointments in the School of Materials Science and Engineering as well as the School of Computational Science and Engineering. Surya earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, and joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University as an Assistant Professor. After twenty years at Drexel University, Surya moved into his current position at Georgia Tech. Surya’s research efforts have made seminal contributions to the fields of crystal plasticity, microstructure design, and materials informatics. Surya has been elected a Fellow of ASM International, TMS, and ASME. In 2016, he and his group members have been awarded the top prize as well as one of the runner-up prizes in the national Materials Science and Engineering Data Challenge sponsored by the Air Force Research Lab in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. National Science Foundation. He has also been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, the Vannever Bush Faculty Fellow, the Government of India’s Vajra Faculty Award, and the Khan International Award.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Sandfeld is Director of the Institute for Advanced Simulation: Materials Data Science and Informatics (IAS-9) Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany; and Professor/Chair of Materials Data Science and Materials Informatics, RWTH Aachen University.

Dr. A. Erman Tekkaya is a graduate of the Middle East Technical University (METU), Mechanical Engineering Department in Ankara/Türkiye and received his Dr.-Ing. degree at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He was professor at the METU, the Atilim University and the Stuttgart University. Currently, he is professor (i. R.) at the TU Dortmund University, Institute for Metal Forming and Lightweight Components. His research interests cover fundamentals and technology of novel metal forming processes, material characterisation at large plastic strains, and damage-controlled metal forming processes improving the usability of the formed components. Selected scientific impulses are on the topics metal forming beyond shaping, damage optimised high performance formed-components, the wide world of stress superposition in metal forming and novel experiments for advanced material characterisation. He was awarded the International Prize for Research & Development in Precision Forging by the Japanese Society for Technology of Plasticity in 2014 and received the SME Gold Medal (American Society of Manufacturing Engineers) in 2022. He is fellow of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) and acts as the founding editor-in-chief of the international journal Advances in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (AIME) by Elsevier. Since 2019, he is Honorary Professor at the Xi’an Jiatong University, Xi’an/PR China and currently adjunct professor at the Ohio State University, Columbus/USA.

Dr. Nima Haghdadi is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor in the US) in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. Before joining Imperial, he was a Lecturer and Deputy Group Leader (2019–2024) at UNSW Sydney, and held the Alfred Deakin Fellowship and Victoria Fellowship at Deakin University (2017–2019). His group’s research focuses on optimizing the microstructure, mechanical properties, and corrosion resistance of additively manufactured metallic materials, with a particular emphasis on interface and grain boundary engineering. He currently serves as an editor for Springer's Journal of Materials Science.

Emilio Martínez Pañeda is an Associate Professor in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. Prior to joining Oxford, he was a Reader (Associate Professor) at Imperial College London, where he led an interdisciplinary research group from 2019 to 2023 (2019: Lecturer, 2021: Senior Lecturer, 2023: Reader). Before joining Imperial, he was an 1851 Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Prof Emilio Martínez-Pañeda’s research spans a wide range of challenges lying at the interface between mechanics and other disciplines, such as materials science, geology, chemistry, biology, and structural engineering. He currently holds an ERC Starting Grant (ResistHfracture) and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (NEWPHASE).

Prof. Dr Ruth Schwaiger heads the Institute of Energy Materials and Devices - Microstructure and Properties of Materials (IMD-1, former IEK-2) at Forschungszentrum Jülich and is also a professor at RWTH Aachen University.

Prof. Wang’s research interests span the areas of modeling and simulation of microstructure evolution during phase transformation and deformation in structural materials, SMAs and metallic glasses. Dr Wang received his Ph.D. (1995) in Materials Science from Rutgers University. He has published over 300 refereed journal articles (with over 120 in Acta Materialia). His major awards include NSF CAREER Award, Harrison Faculty Award for Excellence in Engineering Education from Ohio State University, Fraunhofer Bessel Research Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award, Cyril Stanley Smith Award, William Hume-Rothery Award and Fellow Award from TMS.