Michel RappazAfter a PhD in solid state physics (1978) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and a post-doc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Michel Rappaz joined the Institute of Materials of EPFL in 1981. After two years in an engineering company, he came back to EPFL in 1984 where he was nominated Adjunct Professor in 1990 and Full Professor in 2003. He retired from EPFL in 2015 and is now Emeritus Professor and independent consultant for several industries and research centres.
His main interests are in phase transformations and solidification, in particular the coupling of macroscopic aspects of heat and mass transfer with microscopic aspects of microstructure and defect formation. Among his diverse achievements, one can mention in particular the development of cellular automata for grain structure predictions and of granular models for hot tearing formation in castings, the coupling of Finite Element method with microscopic models of nucleation and growth, the application of the phase field method to the understanding of various microstructures, the discovery of quasicrystal mediated-nucleation in alloys, and many other studies both fundamental at the microstructure-defect level and more applied at the level of processes.
Some of the software developments have been commercialized by a spin-off company founded by his group in 1991 (Calcom SA), now part of the French company ESI. Michel Rappaz initiated in 1992 an annual postgraduate course on solidification which has been attended by more than 900 participants from all over the world. He is presently collaborating closely with another spin-off company started from his group, Novamet SàrL.
Michel Rappaz has received several awards, in particular the Mathewson co-author award (1994) and author award (1997) of the American Mineral, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), the Koerber foundation award jointly with Profs Y. Bréchet and M. Asbby (1996), the Sainte-Claire Deville Medal (1996) and the Grand Medal (2011) from the French Materials Society, the Bruce Chalmers Award of TMS (2002), the Mc Donald Memorial Lecture award of Canada (2005), the FEMS European Materials Gold Medal (2013) and the Brimacombe Prize of TMS (2015). He is a highly-cited author of ISI, a fellow of ASM, IOP and TMS, and has co-authored more than 200 publications and two books.
Wilfried KurzWilfried Kurz is Professor Emeritus of Materials Science at "Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL" (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne). He received his diploma and doctors degree from University of Leoben, Austria. In 1964 he joined the staff of the Battelle Geneva Research Laboratories, which he left in 1971 as head of the physical metallurgy group. In the same year he was appointed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where, until his retirement in 2003, he directed the Laboratory of Physical Metallurgy as well as of the Laser Materials Processing Centre. After participating in 1972/73 in the foundation of the curriculum in Materials Science and Engineering at EPFL he was twice Head of Department. Under others he served as president of SVMT (Swiss Assoc. for Materials Science & Technology) and of FEMS, the Federation of European Materials Societies. Author of four books, he published some 250 papers and patents, principally on the science and technology of solidification microstructures and processes. Professor Kurz is corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, highly cited researcher and the recipient of awards from Eisenhuette Oesterreich; The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS, USA); ASM International, USA; Société Française de Métallurgie et de Matériaux; Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Materialkunde; Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, London; Associatione Italiana di Metallurgia; Peoples Republic of China; Federation of European Materials Societies; and Iron and Steel Institute of Japan.
Selected publications of recent years:
Fundamentals of Solidification, W. Kurz, DJ Fisher, Trans Tech Publ., Switzerland,, 4th revised edition 1998, 305 p
Solidification, H Müller-Krumbhaar, W Kurz, E Brener, in: Phase Transformations in Materials, G Kostorz, ed., Wiley-VCH, 2001, p.81-170
Single-crystal laser deposition of superalloys: Processing-microstructure maps, M Gäumann, C Bezencon, P Canalis, W Kurz, Acta Mater., 49 (2001) 1051-1062
Solidification microstructure processing maps: Theory and application, W Kurz, Adv. Eng. Mater., 3 (2001) 443-452
Dendritic growth, W Kurz, R Trivedi, in: Proc. MC Flemings Symposium on Solidification and Materials Processing, eds R Abbaschian, H Brody, A Mortensen, TMS, Warrendale, PA, 2001, p. 87-99
Massive Transformation and Absolute Stability, M. Lima, W. Kurz, Metall. Mater. Trans. 33A (2002) 2337-2345
Introduction to Materials Science, JP Mercier, G Zambelli, W Kurz, Elsevier, Paris, 2002, 461 p.
Epitaxial deposition of MCrAlY coatings on a Ni-base superalloy by laser cladding, C Bezencon, A Schnell, W Kurz, Scripta Mater. 49 (2003) 705-709
Peritectic Coupled Growth, S Dobler, TS Lo, M Plapp, A Karma, W Kurz, Acta Mater., 52 (2004) 2795-2808
Solidification cracking of superalloy single- and bi-crystals, N Wang, S Mokadem, M Rappaz, W Kurz, Acta Mater., 52 (2004) 3173-3182
Laser Repair of Superalloy Single Crystals with Varying Substrate Orientations, S Mokadem, C Bezencon, A Hauert, A Jacot, W Kurz, Metall. Mater. Trans. 38A (2007) 1500-1510
Plane Front Solidification, W. Kurz, ASM Handbook Vol. 15: Casting, 2008, 293-298
Solidification microstructures and solid-state parallels: Recent developments, future directions, M Asta, C Beckermann, A Karma, W Kurz, R Napolitano , M Plapp, G Purdy, M Rappaz, R Trivedi, Acta Mater., 57 (2009) 941971
Solute Trapping-Free Massive Transformation at Absolute Stability, A. Jacot, M. Sumida, W. Kurz, Acta Mater. 59 (2011) 1716-1724
Andreas MortensenAndreas Mortensen is currently Professor and Director of the Institute of Materials at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the Laboratory for Mechanical Metallurgy. He joined the faculty of EPFL 1997 after ten years, from 1986 to 1996, as a member of the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he held the successive titles of ALCOA Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor. His research is focussed on the processing, microstructural development and mechanical behavior of advanced metallic materials with particular focus on metal matrix composites and metal foams, on infiltration processing and capillarity, and on damage and fracture in metallic materials. He is author or co-author of two monographs, around one hundred and eighty scientific or technical publications and twelve patents. Born in San Francisco in 1957, of dual (Danish and US) nationality, Andreas Mortensen graduated in 1980 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris with a Diplôme dIngénieur Civil, and earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT in 1986. Besides his academic employment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Nippon Steel during part of 1986, and was invited professor at the Ecole des Mines in Paris during the academic year 1995 to 1996. He is a member of the editorial committee of International Materials Reviews and has co-edited four books. He is a Fellow of ASM, a recipient of the Howe Medal and the Grossman Award of the American Society of Metals, was awarded the Péchiney Prize by the French Academy of Sciences and the Res Metallica Chair from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, received three EPFL teaching awards, is one of ISIs Highly Cited authors for Materials Science since 2002 and was awarded an ERC advanced grant in 2012.