The activities of the Evaluation Committee for the ECCOMAS award for the best PhD theses in 2023 were carried out in an online format. As an answer to the call for tenders, the ECCOMAS member associations nominated 17 theses. The Evaluation Committee was composed by Manolis Papadrakakis (chairman), Antonia Larese, Elie Hachem, Bastian Oesterle and Pedro Díez (secretary).
After discussing the procedure, all the candidate theses were assessed by the members of the Committee, accounting for the different relevant aspects of all of them. The assessment grids of all the members were added up and a shortlist of the four best ranked ones was analyzed again in detail in an online meeting. Two theses ranked above the others and therefore the committee has unanimously agreed on selecting them as the two winners.
The two winners are:
• Dr. Maximilian Ries (Germany) nominated by GAMC, for the thesis “Characterization and modeling of polymer nanocomposites across the scales – A comprehensive approach covering the mechanical behavior of matrix, filler, and interphase”.
• Dr. Moritz Flaschel (Switzerland) nominated by Swiccomas, for the thesis “Automated Discovery of Material Models in Continuum Solid Mechanics”
These theses are outstanding works in Computational Methods in Applied Sciences combining excellent knowledge of both theory and practice, with special insight in the fundamental and computational aspects. The panel has appreciated the complementary on the focus of the scientific contributions. The first introduces a methodology to transfer structural insights on the molecular scale into mechanical material properties relevant at the engineering scale, contributing significantly to the numerical modelling of nanostructured materials and complementing experimental studies. Furthermore, his doctoral project establishes an essential link between the chemistry and engineering communities, facilitating a holistic understanding of polymer nanocomposites. The latter, presents a new approach that makes the current paradigm for material model identification obsolete and replaces it with a new paradigm that has already attracted significant attention by our community. In this novel approach, the best material model is automatically discovered by exploiting the combination of full-field experimental data, a material model library (an ansatz space) of potentially enormous size, suitable physics constraints, and a sparsity-promoting regularization.
The two winners are pieces of research that extend the frontiers of the fields of ECCOMAS, and open our community to new problems and methodologies. The award decision was based on the relevance of the topics, the originality of the theses, their scientific content, the innovative numerical developments and the personal involvement of the candidates. Moreover, both theses are very well written and meticulously presented.
All nominees will be recognized by a special diploma that will be sent directly to the candidate
| Association | Name | Last name | Title of the thesis |
| AIMETA-GIMC | Alessadro | Marengo | The phase-field modeling of fracture evolution in ductile materials with application to paperboard mechanics |
| APMTAC | Marco | Zecchetto | Universality and scaling relations for turbulent/non-turbulent interfaces in free shear flows |
| CEACM | Samir | Suljevic | New approach to composite materials modeling under extreme mechanical and thermal loading |
| CSMA | Alice | Nassor | Domain Decomposition Method for Coupled Acoustic-Elastic Problems in the Time Domain. Application to Underwater Explosions. |
| GAMM | Denisa | Martonová | Computational modelling and simulation of heart electromechanics – from (smoothed) finite element methods towards a ligand-receptor model. |
| GAMNI | Thomas | Bellotti | Numerical analysis of lattice Boltzmann schemes : from fundamental issues to efficient and accurate adaptive methods |
| IACMM | Jonathan | Weissmann | The Myocardial Biomechanics of Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction |
| NMC | Rui | Yang | Turbulent flow with phase change |
| NOACM | Anna | Dalklint | Gradient-based optimization of non-linear structures and materials |
| NTCAM | Alessio | Pappa | Fuel and operational flexibility of micro Gas Turbines: assessment of combustor performances, emissions, and stability |
| PACM | Marzena | Mucha | Influence of rate-dependence on unstable material response in large strain thermo-plasticity |
| SEMA | Manuel | Colera Rico | A high-order nearly-conservative Lagrange-Galerkin method for compressible flows |
| SEMNI | Quercus | Hernández | Structure Preserving Deep Learning |
| SIMAI | Michele | Bucelli | Mathematical and numerical modeling of the heart function: integrating electrophysiology, mechanics and fluid dynamics |
| UKACM | Paulo Roberto | Refachinho de Campos | A New Updated Reference Lagrangian Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics Framework for Large Strain Solid Dynamics and its Extension to Dynamic Fracture |