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).
Jacques RappazOriginaire de Neyruz-sur-Moudon (VD), Jacques Rappaz est né le 22 mars 1947. Après ses études primaires et secondaires à Lausanne, il étudie la physique, de 1964 à 1970, à l'Ecole Polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne (EPUL et EPFL dès 1969) où il obtient son diplôme en janvier 1971. Il entreprend ensuite un travail de recherche en analyse numérique à l'EPFL. En avril 1976, il soutient une thèse consacrée à l'approximation spectrale d'opérateurs provenant de la physique des plasmas. De 1977 à 1980, il est boursier du Fonds National Suisse (FNS) et séjourne à Paris. A l'Ecole Polytechnique de Palaiseau et à l'Université Paris VI, il travaille sur l'approximation de problèmes non-linéaires provenant de la physique.De 1980 à 1985, il retourne à l'EPFL en tant que chercheur au FNS puis collaborateur scientifique du Professeur Jean Descloux. En 1983 il entreprend, en collaboration avec l'entreprise Alusuisse, des recherches sur la simulation numérique du procédé Hall-Héroult permettant la production de l'aluminium par électrolyse. Ces recherches ont débouché par la suite sur de nombreux projets en collaboration avec les compagnies Alcan, puis Péchiney et Rio Tinto. En 1985, Jacques Rappaz est nommé professeur ordinaire de mathématiques appliquées à l'Université de Neuchâtel qu'il quittera en octobre 1987 pour un poste de professeur ordinaire à l'EPFL. De 1983 à 2012 où il a pris sa retraite, Jacques Rappaz a enseigné de nombreux cours d'analyse et d'analyse numérique aux ingénieurs et aux mathématiciens de l'EPFL, de l’Université de Genève et de l'Université de Neuchâtel. Sa recherche concerne les aspects théoriques et pratiques de la résolution numérique des équations aux dérivées partielles. Il a participé à de nombreux projets de simulations numériques en collaboration avec les milieux industriels et/ou les départements d'ingénieurs de l'EPFL.
Johan Alexandre Philippe GaumeI started my scientific career in 2008 at the Grenoble University in the IRSTEA laboratory where I did my master's thesis on the rheology of dense granular materials using the discrete element method. In the same lab, I followed with a PhD on the numerical modeling of the release depth of extreme avalanches using a combined mechanical-statistical approach and spatial extreme statistics. In 2013 I obtained a postdoc position at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos where I was in charge of developing and applying numerical models to improve the evaluation of avalanche release conditions and thus avalanche forecasting. While my PhD was mostly theoretical and numerical, my postdoc in Davos allowed me to gain a practical expertise by participating in laboratory and field experiments which helped to validate the models I develop. In 2016, I was awarded a SNF grant to work as a research and teaching associate in CRYOS at EPFL on the multiscale modeling of snow and avalanche processes. I developed discrete approaches to model snow micro-structure deformation and failure in order to evaluate constitutive snow models to be used at a larger scale in continuum models. I also developed numerical models for wind-driven snow transport. In 2017, I was a Visiting Scholar at UCLA to work on a Material Point Method (MPM) to simulate both the initiation and propagation of snow avalanches in a unified manner. The UCLA MPM model was initially developed for the Disney movie "Frozen" and has been modified and enriched based on Critical State Soil Mechanics to model the release and flow of slab avalanches. The results of this collaboration have been published in Nature Communications. In 2018, I was awarded the SNF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship and became professor at EPFL and head of SLAB, the Snow and Avalanche Simulation Laboratory. At SLAB, we study micro-mechanical failure and fracture propagation of porous brittle solids, with applications in snow slab avalanche release. We also simulate avalanche dynamics and flow regime transitions over complex 3D terrain through the development of new models (depth-resolved and depth-averaged) based on MPM.In 2020, I obtained a SPARK grant to develop a new approach to simulate and better understand complex process chains in gravitational mass movements, including permafrost instabilities, rock, snow and ice avalanches and transitions to debris flows.
