Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida ReisPedro M. Reis is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, where he is the Director of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Reis received a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Manchester, UK (1999), a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Mathematics (Part III Maths) from St. John’s College and DAMTP, University of Cambridge (2000), and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Manchester (2004). He was a postdoc at the City College of New York (2004-2005) and at the CNRS/ESPCI in Paris (2005-2007). He joined MIT in 2007 as an Instructor in Applied Mathematics. In 2010 he moved to MIT’s School of Engineering, with dual appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Civil & Environmental Engineering, first as the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor and, since the summer of 2014 as Gilbert W. Winslow Associate Professor. In October 2013, the Popular Science magazine named Prof. Reis to its 2013 “Brilliant 10” list of young stars in Science and Technology. He has received the 2014 CAREER Award (NSF), the 2016 Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award (Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME), the 2016 GSOFT Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research (APS), he is a Fellow of the APS, and he is the 2021 President of the Society of Engineering Science (SES).
Miguel Fernández RuizMiguel Fernández Ruiz was born in Spain in 1977. He obtained his diploma in Civil Engineering from the Polytechnical University of Madrid (Spain) in 2001 and was awarded that year as best student in Civil Engineering in Spain. He later performed his doctoral studies in the same University, and obtained his PhD (cum laude) in 2003. At the same time he performed his doctoral studies, he also developed a part-time (75%) career in the industry as consultant engineer specialized in composite structures.
In 2004 he joined the team of Prof. Aurelio Muttoni at EPFL as post-doctoral fellow, where he was later promoted as scientist and lecturer. In 2014 he is promoted as Senior Scientist at EPFL. Currently, he works part-time (70%) at EPFL, developing also a professional career as partner of a consulting firm specialized in structural design.