Complex materials play an essential role in many applications, ranging from turbine blades, car chassis, computer and cell phone cases, battery systems, stretchable and wearable electronics, to biomedical applications. Those materials often operate and must maintain their high performance in harsh environments. The advancement of computationalmethods at multiple scales opens new possibilities for the design of such complex materials and the optimization of their intrinsic properties under extreme events. The bridging of different length and time scales though still represents an area of active research with many unresolved challenges. For example, material degradation is considered as a typical multiscale process, controlled by nanoscale defects, highly affecting the macroscopic material response.

The confirmed presenters include Jose E. Andrade (Caltech), Ronaldo I. Borja (Stanford), JS Chen (UC San Diego), William Curtin (EPFL), Jacob Fish (Columbia), Somnath Ghosh (Johns Hopkins), Ellen Kuhl (Stanford), Lars P. Mikkelsen (TU Denmark ), Christian Frithiof Niordson (TU Denmark),  Stefanie Reese (RWTH Aachen), Siegfried Schmauder (Stuttgart), Jörg Schröder (Universität Duisburg-Essen), Mads Peter Sørensen (TU Denmark) and others.

Symposium Topics include but are not limited to