Speakers

Abstract

We live in interesting times. AI is on everyone’s mind. We are on the threshold of AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, which exceeds human ability on almost everything. Some say we already there. Will it bring untold increases in standards of living, or doom civilization. Will Agents happily help us and do all our tedious tasks and simplify our work or become evil like HAL 9000 in the movie 2001 and seek to destroy us. There are many real examples already of both the potential good and the potential bad. Many people make prognostications, but let’s face it. No one knows. We are going for a ride on a fast-moving train and there do not seem to be any stops so we can’t get off. When in doubt, do what you do best, and for me that’s IGA, but acknowledging that IGA will and already is being affected by AI, and AGI (which is IGA spelled backwards).

IGA has now entered the workflows of the two most significant commercial nonlinear FEA codes, Abaqus and LS-DYNA. We are at the beginning of the transformation of IGA from an academic research endeavor to industrial applications. The original vision of IGA [1] centered on eliminating, or at least significantly simplifying, the tedious model and mesh development steps of the overall engineering solution process. However, the interest in IGA developed in the solution area first, due primarily to three developments: The higher accuracy of spline based elements compared with traditional finite elements; Bézier extraction [2], which enabled the decomposition of the design description of a geometric object into a finite element file, which facilitated simple implementation in FEA codes; and the accuracy breakthrough in immersed modeling [3], which simultaneously offered a new paradigm in modeling and meshing. This is the area of highest interest today and is the key to industrial adoption.

In my talk I will review recent progress in IGA, the effect of AI, and focus on at least one technical area, the incompressibility problem. Casual statements about “locking” have suggested that the problem for splines is unsettled. I will dispel that claim and illustrate with the precise criteria that must be satisfied to achieve provably stable and accurate spline based discretizations of incompressibily and near incompressibility, both for Galerkin and stabilized formulations. The picture is complete, unambiguous and there are many satisfactory solutions.

References

[1] T.J.R. Hughes, J.A. Cottrell, and Y. Bazilevs, “Isogeometric Analysis: CAD, Finite Elements, NURBS, Exact Geometry and Mesh Refinement,” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 194, (2005) 4135-4195.

[2] M.J. Borden, M.A. Scott, J.A. Evans, and T.J.R. Hughes, “Isogeometric finite element data structures based on Bézier extraction of NURBS,” International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 187, (2011) 15-47.

[3] A. Düster, J. Parvizian, Z. Yang, and E. Rank, “The finite cell method for three-dimensional problems of solid mechanics,” Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 197, (2008) 3768-3782.

Bio

Thomas J.R. Hughes holds B.E. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Pratt Institute and an M.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Engineering Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at Berkeley, Caltech and Stanford before joining the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. 

He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere. Dr. Hughes has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Louvain, Pavia, Padua, Trondheim, Northwestern, A Coruña, and INSA Lyon.

Dr. Hughes is one of the most widely cited authors in Engineering Science. He has received the Huber Prize and Von Karman Medal from ASCE, the Timoshenko, Worcester Reed Warner, and Melville Medals from ASME, the Von Neumann Medal from USACM, the Gauss-Newton Medal from IACM, the Computational Mechanics Award of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Grand Prize from the Japanese Society of Computational Engineering and Sciences, the Computational Mechanics Award of the Japanese Association for Computational Mechanics, the Humboldt Research Award for Senior Scientists from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the AMCA Award for an International Scientific Career from the Argentinian Association for Computational Mechanics, and the Wilhem Exner Medal from the Austrian Association für SME (Öesterreichischer Gewerbeverein, OGV). He is an Honorary Member of the Japanese Association for Computational Mechanics (JACM). 

He has also received several honors in mathematics. Noteworthy among them are the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Ralph E. Kleinman Prize, the SIAM and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computational Science and Engineering Prize, and the William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics. He was also a plenary lecturer at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2010, held every four years, which is considered one of the highest honors in mathematics. He was only the second engineer since 1897 to deliver a plenary lecture at the ICM, the first being Theodore von Karman in 1928.

The Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators in Applied Mechanics is an award given annually by the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME. In 2008 this award was renamed the Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award.

In 2012 the Computational Fluid Mechanics Award of the United States Association of Computational Mechanics was renamed the Thomas J.R. Hughes Medal.

Bio

Dr. Michael A. Scott is a globally recognized leader in isogeometric analysis (IGA) whose work has helped define the field in both academia and industry. He earned his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 2011 and served on the civil engineering faculty at Brigham Young University until 2022, when he left academia to lead Coreform full-time. While being named a Highly Cited Researcher seven years in a row, he also led Coreform as an Inc. 5000 company for four consecutive years. Dr. Scott founded Coreform in 2014 and led the development of Coreform IGA, the world’s first commercial general-use IGA solver.

Abstract

This talk addresses the development of high-performance isogeometric methods for the simulation and shape optimization of complex structures, with a focus on aerospace applications. The proposed approach relies on a tight coupling between geometric modeling and analysis, enabling a unified treatment of design and simulation without remeshing. Particular emphasis is placed on complex multipatch geometries, for which non-conforming discretizations are handled through an embedded formulation combined with mortar coupling techniques. This framework ensures exact geometric compatibility while allowing for localized shape modifications. The resulting discrete problems are reformulated within a dual domain decomposition framework, leading to scalable solvers suitable for large-scale computations. These developments are illustrated on challenging structural configurations, including stiffened shells and volumetric components arising in aeronautical design. Finally, ongoing work explores ultrafast computational strategies to significantly reduce computational costs and memory footprint, thereby accelerating isogeometric simulations. This paves the way for large-scale and many-query simulations, as well as near real-time applications in design and optimization.

Bio

Thomas Elguedj is a full professor of mechanical engineering at INSA Lyon whose research focuses mainly on the development of isogeometric analysis (IGA) for advanced problems in computational mechanics. His work aims at strengthening the integration between geometric modeling and numerical simulation, with particular emphasis on high-order methods and geometry-consistent discretizations. He graduated from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay and obtained his Master’s degree and PhD from INSA Lyon. Following postdoctoral positions at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (UT Austin) and CNRS, he was appointed assistant professor at INSA Lyon in 2008. He received his Habilitation to supervise research from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in 2014 and was promoted to full professor in 2017. His contributions to IGA include the development of robust and efficient formulations addressing key challenges such as analysis-suitable model generation and multi-patch coupling, locking phenomena, shell modeling, and domain decomposition strategies. More recently, his research has focused on scalable space–time formulations and efficient computational strategies to enable the simulation of complex industrial processes, including thermo-mechanical problems arising in additive manufacturing.

Abstract

Isogeometric analysis (IGA), with its superior approximation capabilities and seamless integration of design and analysis, has proven to be an effective computational technology for addressing a wide range of modern scientific and engineering problems. This talk will highlight several novel applications in which IGA serves as the core technical ingredient for fluid–structure interaction and multiphase flow simulations.

In the first half of the talk, we will present a fully coupled isogeometric free-surface fluid–structure interaction formulation that integrates aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, free-surface evolution, and the dynamics of complex composite structures. We will demonstrate how this framework advances the design and analysis of offshore renewable energy harvesting systems and aquatic sports equipment.

In the second half, we will show how the superior approximation properties of IGA basis functions, particularly for higher-order differential operators, enable more accurate modeling of capillary phenomena in multiphase flows. We will present several applications, including bubble dynamics and advanced manufacturing processes, illustrating the potential of IGA for tackling challenging multiphysics problems.

Bio

Jinhui Yan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2016, followed by a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Northwestern University before joining the faculty at UIUC. His research group works broadly on computational mechanics and its scientific and engineering applications. He received the ASME Robert M. and Mary Haythornthwaite Young Investigator Award in 2018 and the Gallagher Young Investigator Medal from the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) in 2023. His research group's additive manufacturing (AM) model won first place in the 2025 NIST AM Benchmark Modeling Competition, and his work was recognized with the Best Paper in Manufacturing Technology Award from the Vertical Flight Society in 2024. He is a Levenick Teaching Fellow and is often recognized as an excellent teacher by students at UIUC. He currently serves as Chair of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) Technical Thrust of USACM. More information can be https://yan.cee.illinois.edu/

Abstract

Design domains in topology optimization (TO) are often far more complex than the idealized benchmark geometries commonly considered in the literature. Existing designs, environmental constraints, multi-material configurations, non-design regions, and intricate computer-aided design (CAD) models all introduce geometric and topological complexities that pose significant challenges to conventional TO workflows. Addressing these challenges requires a tighter integration of CAD, computer-aided engineering (CAE), and TO, motivating the use of isogeometric analysis (IGA) as a unified computational framework that preserves high-fidelity geometry throughout the entire design process.

This talk presents recent developments in our research on isogeometric topology optimization (ITO) for complex design domains from three complementary perspectives. The first part focuses on ITO on shell structures using unstructured splines, whose watertight representation enables seamless integration of design, analysis, andoptimization. To overcome the computational bottleneck associated with repeated analysis solves, an efficient weighted quadrature scheme for unstructured splines will be introduced, significantly accelerating Galerkin matrix formation while maintaining accuracy. The second part addresses complex design domains involving non-design regions and boundary representations (B-reps). An immersed isogeometric framework will be presented to accommodate these geometric complexities, together with a minimal stabilization strategy for high-order partial differential equations to ensure robustness and accuracy. The final part explores AI-accelerated topology optimization to alleviate the high computational cost of iterative analyses. Two approaches will be introduced: an element-based learning approach that achieves substantial speedups with limited training data while exhibiting strong generalization capability, and a spline-based neural network that retains the exact geometric representation of complex CAD models and supports both solution learning and operator learning.

By combining advanced geometric representations, efficient numerical methods, and data-driven acceleration, the methodologies presented in this talk provide a unified computational framework for CAD-integrated topology optimization on complex engineering design domains.

Bio

Xiaodong Wei is an Associate Professor in the Global College at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research lies at the intersection of geometry and analysis, with a specific focus on unstructured splines, immersed boundary methods, and their integration with scientific machine learning. Prior to joining SJTU, he held a postdoctoral position at EPFL and earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Engineering with Computers and is a recipient of the NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Overseas).