Christof Sommitsch

Prof. Christof Sommitsch is a University Professor at Graz University of Technology in Austria. The focus of his research is on materials development of high strength, high-temperature as well as hydrogen-resistant steels, wire- and powder-based metal additive manufacturing of structural and functional materials, joining and forming of metals and materials modelling. He has co-authored close to 650 publications on these topics. He graduated at the Technical University of Leoben (1995) and earned his PhD degree in Materials Science from Graz University of Technology (1999) in Austria respectively. He has been with steel industry, i.e., Böhler Special Steels from 1999-2004 and served as the deputy head of Chair of Metal Forming at the Montanuniversität Leoben until 2009. He has been Head of the Institute of Materials Science, Joining and Forming at Graz University of Technology since 2009 and served as the Dean of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Economic Sciences (2012-2015). He is member of several Boards of Directors in industry, research centers and universities. Prof. Sommitsch is Fellow of the School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. His research has been supported by both, industry and national as well as European Research programs. 

Yannis Korkolis

Prof. Yannis P. Korkolis received his Dipl-Ing. (1998) in Mechanical Engineering and M.Sc (2002) in Computational Mechanics degrees from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. He obtained a PhD (2009) in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Since 2009 he was an Assistant (2009-2015) and then tenured Associate (2015-2018) Professor at the University of New Hampshire, and then a tenured Associate Professor (2019-2023) at the Ohio State University. He joined the Technical University Dortmund, Germany in November, 2023, where he is currently the Professor and Head of Institute of Forming Technologies and Lightweighting (IUL). He is the Spokesperson of Transregio 188 “Damage-controlled forming processes”. He has co-authored over 280 publications, including over 170 peer-reviewed ones. Among other accolades, he has received the early-career investigator award (CAREER) from the US National Science Foundation, the Ralph Teetor Award from the US Society of Automotive Engineers and was the main organizer of the 13^th Edition of the NUMIFORM Conference in 2019, one of the leading global conferences in bulk and sheet metal forming processes.