European Conference on Constitutive Models for Rubber XIV (ECCMR 2026)

Prof James Busfield FREng FIMMM FHEA

Head of the Soft Matter Group, Queen Mary University of London

James has been the Head of the Soft Matter Group at QMUL since 1994. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and a National Teaching Fellow in 2009. He has also been recognised for his research by the award of the George Stafford Whitby Award (awarded to outstanding international teachers of polymer science and recognising innovative research by the ACS ) in 2021, the Colwyn Medal (the premier medal for rubber research awarded by the IOM3) in 2009 and the Sparks-Thomas Award (recognising outstanding contributions and innovations in the field of elastomers by the ACS) in 2010. Before 1994, James designed suspension components for an automotive industry supply company, designing systems for companies such as Jaguar, Volvo and Mercedes

: https://www.sems.qmul.ac.uk/staff/j.busfield
: james-busfield-a8b1931b
: @jamesbusfield

James Lee

Conferences & Events Organiser, IOM3

No bio provided

Dr Davide De Focatiis

Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham

Dr Davide De Focatiis MA MEng FIMMM CSci completed his MEng degree in Engineering Science at the University of Cambridge in 1999. During his Masters research, working with Dr Simon Guest, he discovered a family of biomimetic folding mechanisms based on the folding structure of beech and hornbeam leaves, with applications as deployable structures. From 1999-2003 he studied for a DPhil (Ph.D.) at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, with Dr Zhong You. This work was concerned with the mechanics of a needle-free powder injection device developed by Oxford spin-off PowderJect Pharmaceuticals. After completing his DPhil, he was employed as a Research Assistant in the Solid Mechanics and Materials Engineering group at the Engineering Department, University of Oxford, working under the direction of Prof. C.Paul Buckley, from 2005-2008. This work was part of a large EPSRC funded collaboration following the path of well-characterised polymers from synthesis, through processing into the solid state. Major developments include the formulation of molecularly-aware and process-aware craze initiation criteria, and the development of large-deformation constitutive models for processed amorphous polymer products.

In February 2009 he was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham. In September 2013 he transferred to the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering to better align teaching and research. Besides research on polymers, he convenes the core year 1 module Statics and Dynamics, and an interdisciplinary module on Polymer Engineering (4rd year). He is the department's coordinator for peer observations.

Dr Davide De Focatiis is a part of the Composites Research Group.

Dr Mokarram Hossain

Swansea University

Dr Hossain’s research interests lie in the wide and interdisciplinary areas of soft polymeric and active multifunctional materials (electro-active polymers, magneto-active polymers, light-activated polymers, active hydrogels etc), ranging from material synthesis, experimental study (e.g. multi-axial and multi-field fatigue fracture study of soft polymers) to computational modelling. He is active in field of clean energy harvesting using soft polymers. He received significant amount of research grants both from UKRI and industries in the field of soft polymers.

Prof Andri Andriyana

Director of International Relations Centre, University of Malaya

Professor Andri Andriyana is currently the Director of International Relations Centre (IRC), Universiti Malaya. As the Director, he supports the University efforts for internationalization and global partnerships. He received Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia in 2000. During the period of 2000-2002, he worked as Field Engineer at Halliburton Indonesia where he was involved in a number of oil and gas wells cementing and stimulation projects. His Master’s degree majoring in Mechanical Engineering was obtained from École Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et d’Aérotechnique (ENSMA) - Université de Poitiers, France in 2003. Three years later he received Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics with Distinction from École Centrale de Nantes, France. After completing Ph.D., he served as Assistant Professor at École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) Bordeaux and spent two years as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux (CEMEF), École des Mines de Paris, Sophia Antipolis. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Malaya in 2009 as Senior Lecturer and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and Full Professor in 2016 and 2023 respectively. He has secured approximately USD 5 Million grants (for research, European mobility and capacity building in Higher Education) from public and private sectors. Since 2013, he has been registered as Chartered Engineer (CEng) in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), UK. He was the recipient of the Bourse du Gouvernement Français Scholarship (2002-2003), the Allocation de Recherche Scholarship (2003-2006), the Mahar Schützenberger Prize (2005), the European Interweave Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (2014), UM Sijil Perkhidmatan Cemerlang Award (2011, 2016 and 2020), the Indonesia World Class Professor Fellowship (2017) and UM Anugerah Perkhidmatan Cemerlang Award 2022. He served as the Head of Master of Materials Engineering Program from 2013-2019 and as the Deputy Dean of Research in the Faculty of Engineering in 2019-2021. His research focuses on mechanical testing, constitutive modeling and finite element simulation of deformation, degradation, fracture, fatigue and failure in materials including solid polymers, elastomers, metal alloys, composites and soft biological tissues.

Prof James Busfield FREng FIMMM FHEA

Head of the Soft Matter Group, Queen Mary University of London

James has been the Head of the Soft Matter Group at QMUL since 1994. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and a National Teaching Fellow in 2009. He has also been recognised for his research by the award of the George Stafford Whitby Award (awarded to outstanding international teachers of polymer science and recognising innovative research by the ACS ) in 2021, the Colwyn Medal (the premier medal for rubber research awarded by the IOM3) in 2009 and the Sparks-Thomas Award (recognising outstanding contributions and innovations in the field of elastomers by the ACS) in 2010. Before 1994, James designed suspension components for an automotive industry supply company, designing systems for companies such as Jaguar, Volvo and Mercedes

: https://www.sems.qmul.ac.uk/staff/j.busfield
: james-busfield-a8b1931b
: @jamesbusfield

Prof Hüsnü Dal

Professor, Middle East Technical University, Turkey

With a robust background in computational mechanics and a current focus on advancing robotics and micromechanics, my leadership as Chairman at OTEST A.Ş. and Professor at Middle East Technical University fosters innovation and strategic growth. At the helm of METU's CAD/CAM Robotics Center, I apply my expertise in multiphysics modeling and fracture mechanics to drive multidisciplinary research and development. Our team's mission is to pioneer cutting-edge technologies that align with the university's commitment to excellence. Through collaboration, we're crafting a future that leverages computational electromechanics to solve complex challenges, reflecting our shared values of rigor and impact in the field.

Dr Davide De Focatiis

Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham

Dr Davide De Focatiis MA MEng FIMMM CSci completed his MEng degree in Engineering Science at the University of Cambridge in 1999. During his Masters research, working with Dr Simon Guest, he discovered a family of biomimetic folding mechanisms based on the folding structure of beech and hornbeam leaves, with applications as deployable structures. From 1999-2003 he studied for a DPhil (Ph.D.) at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, with Dr Zhong You. This work was concerned with the mechanics of a needle-free powder injection device developed by Oxford spin-off PowderJect Pharmaceuticals. After completing his DPhil, he was employed as a Research Assistant in the Solid Mechanics and Materials Engineering group at the Engineering Department, University of Oxford, working under the direction of Prof. C.Paul Buckley, from 2005-2008. This work was part of a large EPSRC funded collaboration following the path of well-characterised polymers from synthesis, through processing into the solid state. Major developments include the formulation of molecularly-aware and process-aware craze initiation criteria, and the development of large-deformation constitutive models for processed amorphous polymer products.

In February 2009 he was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham. In September 2013 he transferred to the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering to better align teaching and research. Besides research on polymers, he convenes the core year 1 module Statics and Dynamics, and an interdisciplinary module on Polymer Engineering (4rd year). He is the department's coordinator for peer observations.

Dr Davide De Focatiis is a part of the Composites Research Group.

Dr Julie Diani

CNRS Research Director, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France

Julie Diani is a French academic specialised in the characterization and simulation of polymeric materials. She is the CNRS Research Director at École Polytechnique’s Solid Mechanics Laboratory, and holder of the Arkema Design and Modeling of Innovative Materials Chair.

Prof Luis Dorfmann

Professor, Tufts University, USA

Professor Dorfmann has appointments in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, both at Tufts University.

He is interested in mathematical formulations to model the mechanical response of highly deformable materials in the presence of an electromagnetic field and the strong nonlinear coupling between electromagnetic and mechanical effects.

Additional interests are in the area of biomechanics, with emphasis on the material behavior for soft biological tissues and engineered materials, functional constructs at the macroscopic level and their components at the cellular and molecular levels.

Prof Nere Gil-Negrete

Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Deputy Director of Academic Affairs at Tecnun (School of Engineering), Universidad de Navarra

No bio provided

Dr Mokarram Hossain

Swansea University

Dr Hossain’s research interests lie in the wide and interdisciplinary areas of soft polymeric and active multifunctional materials (electro-active polymers, magneto-active polymers, light-activated polymers, active hydrogels etc), ranging from material synthesis, experimental study (e.g. multi-axial and multi-field fatigue fracture study of soft polymers) to computational modelling. He is active in field of clean energy harvesting using soft polymers. He received significant amount of research grants both from UKRI and industries in the field of soft polymers.

Prof Jörn Ihlemann

Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany

No bio provided

Prof Michael Johlitz

Professor, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany

No bio provided

Prof Michael Kaliske

Professor, TU Dresden

No bio provided

Professor Leif Kari

Vice President, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Leif Kari is professor of Engineering Acoustics at the Department of Engineering Mechanics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He has 30 years' research experience in consitutive modelling, active, semi-active and passive vibration damping and isolation. Since 2019 he is also Vice President at KTH with a special responsibility for education.

: https://www.kth.se/en/sci/2.14290/ave/avd/mwl/contact/professor-leif-kari-dr-sci-tech-1.64774
: leif-kari-b079b12

Prof Jean-Benoît Le Cam

Professor & Deputy Director at Institut de Physique de Rennes, Université de Rennes

After several years as a research engineer in the Total group, Prof. Jean-Benoît Le Cam received his PhD from Ecole Centrale de Nantes in 2005 and has since worked on fatigue damage and fracture mechanisms in elastomers. In 2006, he joined the academic staff of the French Institute of Advanced Mechanics (IFMA) as an Assistant Professor, where he worked on imaging techniques to study mechanics of elastomers. In 2010, he was appointed director of the Structures and Mechanics of Materials department at IFMA. In this period, he has extended his research field to quantitative calorimetry in mechanics of elastomers. In 2011, he joined the Institute of Physics at University of Rennes 1 (UR1) as a Professor in order to create the Quantitative Imaging Group on mechanics of elastomers.

Today, he holds the Cooper Standard Chair in mechanics of elastomers at UR1 and manages the Research Laboratory (LC-DRIME) in Imaging, Mechanics and Elastomers, common to Cooper Standard, UR and the National Centre for Scientific Research. His industrial partners belong to various sectors of engineering: automotive (Michelin), oil pumping (PCM) and anti-vibration systems (Cooper Standard), to name a few.

Dr Claudia Marano

Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano

Employment

November 2010: associate professor (09/D1, ING-IND/22), Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica "Giulio Natta" , Politecnico di Milano
2000- 2010: assistant professor (I14B Materiali Polimerici, actually 09/D1, ING-IND/22) Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica "Giulio Natta"
2003-2010: Facoltà del Design, Politecnico di Milano
2000 - 2003: Facoltà di Ingegneria dei Processi Industriali, Politecnico di Milano
1999 - 2000: research fellowship. Dipartimento di Chimica Industriale e Ingegneria Chimica "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano, on the topic "Study of the plastic deformation controlled by volumetric changes in polymeric systems "
1994-1996: two-year training course for researchers on "Polymer-matrix composites for aerospace applications”.National Research Program on Innovative Advanced Materials

Professional activities

2010 – Elected Member of Board of the Italian Association of Science and Technology of Macromolecules (AIM) Board
2011-2016 Treasurer of Italian Association of Science and Technology of Macromolecules, (AIM)
Serves as a referee for several Scientific Journals: Journal of Polymer Science B, Mehcanics of Time Dependent Materials, Rubber Chemistry and Technology, European Polymer Journal, Polymer Composite, Applied Science, Polymers for Advanced Technologies, Journal of Materials and Design.

Research activity 

The research activity pertains the Polymeric Materials Engineering, (SSD ING-IND/22) and is aimed at studying of polymer structure-property correlations. Particular interest is devoted to the study of:
i) time-dependence of plastic deformation processes in the polymeric materials, in particular of the shear yielding process in amorphous polymers.

The research regards the study of the shear yielding process of polymeric materials, and is particularly aimed at studying the influence of the loading history. The final goal is the identification of a yield criterion expressed in terms of a parameter, which, irrespectively of the loading history, is critical at yield onset. The possible extension of this research in semi-crystalline polymers has already been initiated.

ii) fracture behaviour of rubbers
The research originally started for a pure scientific study, was later developed into a partnership with a tyres factory in order to define characterization methods to effectively correlate the laboratory tests results to the tire performance. The fracture mechanics approach is applied for the determination of "intrinsic" (valid regardless of the geometry test) fracture parameters.

Prof Yann Marco

Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, ENSTA-Bretagne, Brest, France

No bio provided

William Mars

Endurica

Dr. Will Mars founded Endurica LLC in 2008 to give product developers a simple and accurate workflow for analyzing the durability of elastomer products. Thirteen of the top twenty global rubber product companies are using Endurica solutions today. Dr. Mars has received several awards for his scientific contributions and innovations. He has 60+ peer-reviewed publications, holds four patents in the area of elastomer durability and is the past editor of two scientific journals.

Dr Alan Muhr

Retired Head of Engineering Research at TARRC,

Alan Hugh Muhr is a retired TARRC scientist noted for contributions to understanding the mechanics elastomer applications, including laminated rubber isolators, marine fenders, automotive mounts, and structural energy dissipation systems. 

Prof Iva Petríková

Associate Professor, Department of Applied Mechanics , Technical University of Liberec

No bio provided

Prof Erwan Verron

Professor of Mechanical Engineering, École Centrale de Nantes

No bio provided