Dr. Bernard Schrefler is a professor of structural mechanics at the University of Padova and Secretary General of the International Centre for Mechanical Science at Udine. A premier scientist in his field, Dr. Schrefler has authored over four hundred peer-reviewed articles, five textbooks and 23 edited texts. Dr. Schrefler serves on the editorial board of numerous academic journals and is active within the European Community R&D and training initiatives. As an Affiliate Full Member of the Research Institute, Dr. Schrefler supports international affiliations and collaborations with researchers at Houston Methodist.

Dr. Schrefler’s research addresses the fundamental aspects of applied mechanics, large scale computation, and diverse applications to problems of practical interest. His contributions to structural and materials mechanics include the pseudo three-dimensional analysis of tall buildings, variable thickness plates, cable structures and related stability problems, membranes and wrinkling, asymptotic theory of homogenization with second order and boundary layer correctors, hierarchical and concurrent multi scale methods, thermo-electro-mechanical contact, and use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) as constitutive models and for parameter identification for symbolic constitutive models.