University of Waterloo, Canada

Dr. Cliff Butcher is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and Director of the Waterloo Forming and Crash Lab. He completed his engineering degrees at the University of New Brunswick and worked with Professor Emeritus Michael Worswick, founder of the Forming & Crash Lab, as an NSERC post-doctoral fellow and then as a faculty member in 2016. His research interests include the plastic deformation, formability and fracture prediction of advanced and high-strength metals, particularly in relation to automotive applications and crashworthiness. Recent focus areas include sheared edge fracture characterization, refinement of digital image correlation techniques for material characterization and the hot forming and crash performance of 7xxx-series aluminum and ultra-high strength steels.

Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates

Dr. Wesley Cantwell is the Associate Dean for Research and a Professor in Aerospace Engineering at Khalifa University. He received his BSc in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Southampton, and MSc and PhD degrees in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College, UK. He then worked as a Research Scientist in the Department of Materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne for nine years and as a Lecturer/Reader/Professor at the University of Liverpool for eighteen years. During this time, he directed a research team focusing on the impact behavior of lightweight structures. He joined Khalifa University in 2012 to establish and direct the Aerospace Research and Innovation Center (ARIC). His research interests are in composite materials, additive manufacturing as well as the impact response of structures and smart materials. He has published more than 320 Scopus-listed journal papers on these topics. He has presented a number of keynote addresses at leading international conferences since joining ARIC, including at the 2014 European Conference on Composite Materials and the 2017 International Conference on Composite Structures. He currently works with a number of international partners on this topic, including the University of Cape Town, Tokyo University of Science and Tongji University.

ATA Engineering, Colorado, USA

Dr. Joseph Morton is a Project Engineer at ATA Engineering, which specializes in materials characterization and high-rate mechanics. He earned his Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines, where his research focused on the dynamic response of composites and ceramics under extreme loading conditions. His expertise spans hypervelocity impact, aerospace ceramics, and energy-absorbing materials, integrating advanced experimental techniques with computational methods to enable predictive modeling. His work combines hypervelocity testing using two-stage light-gas gun platforms with multiscale simulation approaches, including hydrocodes, finite element methods, and molecular dynamics, enabling physics-based insights across length and time scales. He has held research positions at Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and has collaborated with the US Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, among others.

ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Dr. Christian C. Roth holds a tenured position as Senior Scientist at the Chair of Artificial Intelligence in Mechanics and Manufacturing (AIMM) at ETH Zurich’s Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT). He joined ETH in 2015 after a postdoctoral stay at MIT’s Impact and Crashworthiness Lab. Dr. Roth received his PhD from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris for his work on the effect of strain rate on ductile fracture of metals. While he is particularly interested in the effect of strain rate and temperature, the effect of anisotropy and stress state on the plastic and fracture response of engineering materials are also at the heart of his research. His current focus lies in the development of a fully automated thermo-mechanical high throughput testing laboratory along with the efficient calibration of advanced constitutive models for plasticity and ductile fracture under extreme conditions.

Deakin University, Australia

Shannon Ryan is an Associate Professor in Deakin University’s School of Engineering in Melbourne. His research is focused on the development and application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to complex engineering problems, with a focus on protective structures and materials. A/Professor Ryan has previously worked at the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), US Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL), NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), and the Fraunhofer Ernst-Mach-Institute (EMI).

University of Sheffield, UK

Dr. Andy Tyas is a Professor in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at Sheffield University, and also the DSTL/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Blast Protection Engineering. He graduated from Loughborough University of Technology and received his PhD from the University of Sheffield for research in impact dynamics. Thereafter, he joined Sheffield University in 1997 as an academic staff member. His work focuses on blast and impact engineering, particularly protection of people, buildings and vehicles from explosions, with applications in infrastructure design and transport. His research covers experimental work and advanced numerical modelling. Professor Tyas is also Head of the Blast and Impact research group in the Department, and manages the testing laboratory at Harpur Hill, Buxton, where research into blast physics and the response of structures to rapid dynamic loading is conducted. Other interests encompass the development of computational optimisation-based methods for the design of structures.