Dr. Jacques Périaux career started at Dassault Aviation (France), where he held the roles of Head of the Numerical Analysis Group in the Département d’Aérodynamique Théorique, High Scientific Adviser of the Advanced Studies Division, and later chair the Pôle Scientifique Dassault Aviation / University Pierre et Marie Curie.
From 2007 to 2010, he was selected by TEKES governmental Finnish Organization as Distinguished Professor at the Mathematical Information Technology Department at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. In 2010, he received a UNESCO Chair position on Numerical Methods in Engineering at CIMNE/UPC Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Périaux has built during the last two decades many scientific and technological cooperations, in Europe, USA, Australia and China. His research interests include Evolutionary Algorithms, Game Strategies and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO).
Joaquim R. R. A. Martins is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he heads the MDO Lab. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
His research involves the development and application of MDO methodologies to the design of aircraft configurations, with a focus on high-fidelity simulations that take advantage of high-performance parallel computing.
Before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 2009, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, where from 2002 he held a Tier II Canada Research Chair in MDO. Prof. Martins received his undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College, London, with a British Aerospace Award. He obtained both his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Ballhaus prize for best thesis in Aeronautics. He has served as Associate Editor for the AIAA Journal, Optimization and Engineering, and Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization. He is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Aircraft.
Prof. Jonathan Cooper holds the Airbus Royal Academy of Engineering Sir George White Chair of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol. He has an international reputation for research in aeroelasticity, loads and structural dynamics, having published over 400 technical papers in leading journals and conferences, with 4 written paper prizes, and is the co-author of the Wiley textbook, Introduction to Aircraft Aeroelasticity and Loads.
Over the past 30 years he has worked closely with industry to develop solutions that enable aircraft designs to be more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly through exploitation of the interactions between the airflow and aircraft structures. His Airbus sponsored chair is one of only 7 in the UK.
Prof. Cooper is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and has been a Chartered Engineer for over 25 years. He has currently just finished a two year term as President of the Royal Aeronautical Society.