Dr. Carlos Mendez, born in Mexico in 1981, received his PhD and MEng degrees in Earthquake and Structural Engineering from Hokkaido University, in Sapporo, Japan. He is currently Regional President & CEO for Latin America at mageba Group, and since 2017, elected as Vice-president of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE), the youngest ever in the 90-year history of the Association. He works as a technical consultant on earthquake damage mitigation strategies for infrastructure projects worldwide. Dr. Mendez has published over 75 scientific papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, peer-reviewed international conferences, and other technical meetings. He is the author of 5 book chapters on bridge engineering. He is an active member of several international associations, including IABSE, ASCE and JSCE.
M. Dolores G. Pulido is Head Scientist at the Institute for Construction Science Eduardo Torroja, belonging to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and Professor in the School of Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). She received her degree in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Madrid and her PhD and a MS in Computational Mechanics at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). She also holds a MA from the University of Salamanca. She has previously been a Structural Engineer, specialized in bridge design, for almost 20 years and on the faculty at the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona and at the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. Her research focuses on the mechanics and design of composite structures (full FRP structures), on the strengthening of structures using FRP laminates, and on computational mechanics in structural engineering.
Luís Oliveira Santos, Civil Engineer, MSc in Structural Engineering and PhD in Civil Engineering (Technical University of Lisbon) is Senior Researcher at the Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), Lisbon, Portugal. His field of expertise is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), and he has been responsible for the design, implementation and operation of SHM systems of several bridges in Portugal, Angola, Algeria and Cape Verde. His research activity has been also developed in the field of the time-dependent behaviour of concrete structures, safety assessment of existing bridges and structural effects of the expansive reactions of concrete. He is IABSE Fellow, member of IABMAS and ISHMII and Vice-President of the Portuguese Group of IABSE (APEE). Since 2000, he is Invited Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon.
Kristian carried out his diploma studies and PhD at ETH Zurich with exchange and research stays in Spain, the United States, and Japan. After that, he worked in Denmark on international bridge projects and as a consultant in Switzerland, focusing on assessing existing bridges and the design of new bridges. He taught prospective civil engineers at ETH Zurich and Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in structural analysis on a part-time basis. Latest, as Head of Engineering Structures of a cantonal road administration, he was responsible for an asset of over 1’500 bridges in Switzerland. Kristian has been active in several IABSE Committees and founded Equi Bridges Ltd. in 2020, which provides specialized consultancy on bridge engineering and management.
Juan Sobrino is the founder and president of Pedelta since 1994. Juan is one of the leading bridge and structural engineering experts in the industry. He has performed the conceptual and detailed design of a wide variety of medium to long-span bridge, including more than 15 cable-supported bridges, the first’s world duplex stainless-steel vehicular bridge, the first North-American’s duplex stainless steel pedestrian bridges, the longest GFRP pedestrian arch bridge, the first’s hybrid bridges built with GFRP and stainless-steel. Numerous of his designs have received prestigious awards for their elegance and innovative values worldwide. Juan has been an associate professor at the Technical University of Catalonia for 19 years and an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University for three years.
Thomas Vogel has been Professor of Structural Engineering at the Institute of Structural Engineering (IBK) of the ETH Zurich from October 1993 until his ordinary resignation in January 2021. His teaching covered the fundamentals of structural engineering and respective applications. In research, he concentrated on the evaluation of existing concrete structures, ductile design with brittle materials, the robustness of structures and concrete structures to cope with natural hazards. At ETH, he was Director of Studies, president of the University Senate and Vice-rector for Doctoral Studies as well as head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. In IABSE, he chaired Working Commission 1 from 2001 to 2005, was member of the Administrative Committee from 2005 to 2013, and since November 2015 he is one of the Vice-Presidents.