At University of Pittsburgh, he worked on design of efficient tool for rock cutting and application of Support Vector Machine (SVM) in designing of geostructure. At Tampere University of Technology, he worked on design of railway embankment, slope reliability and site characterization. In 2010, Dr. Pijush joined in the Center for Disaster Mitigation and Management at VIT University as an Associate Professor. He was promoted to a Professor in 2012.
Dr. Pijush’s research focuses on the application of Artificial Intelligence for designing civil engineering structure, design of foundation, stability of railway embankment, reliability analysis, site characterization, and earthquake engineering. Dr. Pijush is the recipient of the prestigious CIMO fellowship (2009) from Finland, for his integrated research on the design of railway embankment. He was awarded Shamsher Prakash Research Award (2011) by IIT Roorkee for his innovative research on the application of Artificial Intelligence in designing civil engineering structure. He wasselected asthe recipient of IGS Sardar Resham Singh Memorial Award – 2013 for his innovative research on infrastructure project. He was elected Fellow of International Congress of Disaster Management in 2010. He served as a guest in disaster advance journal.
Dr. Pijush is active in a variety of professional organizations including the Indian Geotechnical Society, Indian Science Congress, Institution of Engineers, World federation of Soft Computing, and Geotechnical Engineering for Disaster Mitigation and Rehabilitation. He has organized numerous workshops and conferences on the applications of artificial intelligence in civil engineering design. He also serves as an editorial board member and associate editor in several international journals. He has been selected as an adjunct professor at Ton Duc Thang University (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). He has been Visiting Professor at Far East Federal University (Russia). He has published more than 100 international journal papers. He holds the title of docent at Tampere University. He has written several books and book chapters.

Dr. Mo has over 10 years of research experience and his primary research interest is in the area of concrete materials and technology, focusing on sustainable and eco-friendly cement and concrete using recycled by-products, as well as lightweight concretes. Till date, he has authored/ co-authored more than 100 articles in WoS-indexed journals and 5 book chapters, with a current h-index of 30 in WoS. Dr. Mo also contributes in the Editorial Board of 4 journals and as Guest Editor in 3 special issues, as well as serving as a reviewer for more than 80 different journals.
Dr. Mo is the principal investigator/ co-principal investigator in research grants from Universiti Malaya, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, as well as grants from the local industry. Dr. Mo has delivered keynote/ invited talks and presented in international conferences, seminars as well as workshops. He also has active collaboration with researchers locally and internationally, including China, India, UAE and Turkey.
In addition, he enthusiastically participates in the local and international concrete communities, namely as member in the Department of Standards Malaysia’s Technical Committee on Cement (TC/D/25), RILEM TC-291 AMC, ACI Malaysia Chapter, as well as serving as scientific and organizing committee in several international conferences and concrete-related competitions. Dr. Mo was also engaged as consultant for various companies in industrial projects related to cement and concrete materials throughout the years.

Over the years, She won many local and international awards. She acts as a PI and co-I for many academic research grants, including highly competitive grants from the Research Grant Council, ARC Linkage Grant, Public Policy Research Grant and other grants obtained from quasi public institutions and government departments (over 10 million). They have also invited 15 top professors for our IIDS seminar within one year’s time, including Prof John Macintyre, Pro Vice Chancellor of University of Sunderland, Chair Professor Michael Skibniewski (University of Maryland, former Associate Provost in University of Princeton), Distinguished Professor Demetri Terzopoulos (UCLA), Professor Thad Starner (Georgia Tech, team leader of Google Glass), Professor Simon Beecham (former Pro Vice-Chancellor in University of South Australia), Professor Michael Batty (UCL) and many other leading professors in AI and ubiquitous city related areas.
She was the outstanding reviewer of Journal of Cleaner Production, a recipient of a Fellowship from the US to study the impact of law and culture on housing fittings in China which offered me a chance to present a paper to Nobel Prize Economist Prof Douglass North and received the top three presenter award among all the fellowship recipients. She was also a recipient of a grant issued by Ministry of Education jointly with a scholar from the People’s Republic of China, a visiting fellowship awardee from Australia and a finalist award for competition law research in the US, the best paper award for the paper titled “Mechanical and Physical Properties of Basalt Fiber High Strength High Titanium Heavy Slag Concrete”, Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin International Conference “Innovative Technology and Creative Work toward Sustainable Development in 2021, the best paper award for the paper titled “Fast AI Classification for analyzing construction accident claims” in 2020 Artificial Intelligence and Complex Systems Conference at Wuhan University of Technology.
She holds a few visiting positions in overseas university. She served as an Endeavour Research Fellow at the University of South Australia (with Professor Simon Beecham, Deputy Vice Chancellor), a visiting scholar at RMIT (with Distinguished Professor Helen Lingard) in Australia, University of Regina (with Chair Professor Christine Chan, AI research) and Feng Chia University in Taiwan. She also gave guest lecture for Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Malaysia) and Hochschule 21 (Germany). Besides, I previously served as a PhD thesis external examiner for Queensland University of Technology, University of Macau, University Putra Malaysia, MPhil thesis examiner of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman and an external examiner for Open University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University. She was also invited by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to serve as a research grant reviewer.
Her research covers UN Sustainable development goals of: 3. Good Health and Well-being, 7. Affordable and Clean Energy, 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth, 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities, 12. Responsible Consumption and Production, 13. Climate action.

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Prof. Koundouri is the Founder and Scientific Director of the Research Laboratory on Socio-Economic and Environmental Sustainability (ReSEES) at Athens University of Economics and Business, focusing on interdisciplinary research on socio-economic and environmental systems. She is also Affiliated Professor at the ATHENA Research and Innovation Center, where she founded and scientifically directs the Sustainable Development Unit and the EIT Climate-KIC Hub Greece of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, the latter focusing on accelerating technological and social innovations for use in the transition to a climate neutral economy.
Prof. Koundouri is also the co-Chair of United Nations Sustainable Development Network (UN SDSN) -Europe. The leadership of UN SDSN-Europe is constituted from existing National SDSN European networks and its mission is to serve as a science driven interface with European Commission policymaking. Prof. Koundouri is also the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Centre for Research on the Environment and the Economy (ICRE8) and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forest Institute
Prof. Koundouri is one of the Commissioners of the prestigious Lancet Commission on COVID-19 https://covid19commission.org/commissioners for which she co-chairs the "Jobs-based Green Recovery” Task Force. She leads the UN SDSN Senior Working Group on "Transformation Pathways for the implementation of EGD and the SDGs", co-leads the UN SDSN Sustainable Shipping and Ports and Shipping Initiative, and the UN SDSN 4-seas (Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and Aral Seas) Blue Growth Initiative. She is a member of the CEPR (Center for Economic Policy Research) Network (RPN) on Climate Change https://cepr.org/content/cepr-rpn-climate-change-researchers , member of the Priministerial Committee for the Recovery and 10-year Development Plan of Greece, the National Climate Change Committee of the Greece, as well as chair or member of numerous European and International Scientific, Research and Policy Boards and Committees.
Prof. Koundouri acts as a scientific advisor to the European Commission, World Bank, European Investment Bank, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, OECD, UN, NATO, and WHO, etc. numerous national and international foundations and organizations, as well as national governments across the world. Also, Prof. Koundouri is editorial board member of more than 20 prestigious scientific journals.
Since 1997, she has coordinated more than 100 interdisciplinary research projects, in all five continents, focused on combinations of Sustainable Development, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, Behavioural Economics and Econometrics, Economics of Wellbeing and Happiness, Natural Resource-Food-Energy Nexus, Smart Water Systems, Ecosystem Services Valuation, Blue Growth, Circular Economy, Systems Innovation, Innovation Acceleration and Commercialization, and has attracted significant competitive research funding. Prof. Koundouri and her large interdisciplinary team (more than 200 researchers) have produced research and policy results that have contributed to accelerating research and innovation for the enablement of Sustainable Development and has contributed to shaping European and National policies.
Over the last two decades, Professor Koundouri has given keynote and public lecturers, at high level forums all over the world, and received various prizes for academic excellence, including best paper awards, highest policy impact paper, European Research project award, etc. as well as the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant (2020-2027) http://unsdsn.gr/to-professor-phoebe-koundouri-athens-university-of , which focuses on design of the next generation of urban water systems, via the combination of water science, systems and control theory, economics, decision-science and machine learning. This is the biggest research project in the world at the moment working on urban water systems. Prior to joining the Athens University of Economics and Business, Professor Koundouri has held academic positions at the University of Cambridge, University College London, University of Reading and London School of Economics. Prof. Koundouri holds a PhD and MPhil in Economics and Econometrics from the University of Cambridge (UK). For her studies she received a full scholarship from the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.
Prof. Koundouri was born in Cyprus. She is married to Prof. Nikitas Pittis and they have three daughters: Chrysilia, Billie and Athena.

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She received her PhD degree from the University of Arizona in mechanical engineering with minor degree in civil engineering and engineering mechanics. She worked both as a research and teaching assistant during her PhD studies.
Her research mainly focuses on multi-physics modeling of materials and structures as far as damage and structural failure is concerned. Thus her research interests focuses on computational simulations of damage prediction in structures under various loading conditions such as thermomechanical loading, hygrothermal loading and fluid flow.
In this sense, she is interested in a new method, Peridynamics, which is a very powerful technique for damage prediction. She is also working on peridynamic material model development such as thermoelasticity, viscoelasticity and plasticity.
As the application of the model development, she is working on many problems that involves multiphysics simulation of complex material behavior.
Simulation of hydraulic fracturing is a good example for this. The analysis includes coupling of mechanical deformation, flow in porous media and fracture prediction.
Another area that she is working on is the thermal fracturing behavior of fuel pellets. Fuel pellets are used in nuclear reactors for the power generation of submarines and naval ships. Performance of nuclear reactor is influenced by the thermo-mechanical behavior of the pellets.
She is also working on failure prediction in electronic packages. Electronic packages normally include polymer components and these polymer components can absorb moisture during shipping or storage. During the soldering process to join different components of the package at very high temperatures, the absorbed moisture can turn into vapour. As a result cracks can occur. Therefore, she developed a peridynamic model which couples moisture, temperature and structural fields with failure prediction capability.
In addition to her experience with Peridynamics, she also uses Finite Element Method to investigate stiffened structures and wind turbine blades.
She is very interested in collaborative work with industrial and academic partners.
Dr. Oterkus was a visiting professor at Stanford University (USA), University of Padova (Italy) and Otto von Guericke University (Germany). She is a Special Issue Editor for Computational Material Science (Elsevier) and Journal of Mechanics (Cambridge). She is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Peridynamics and Nonlocal Modeling (Springer), International Journal of Science and Qualitative Analysis and EPH-International Journal of Science and Engineering.

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In 2012, she was member the group submitting the project “New Materials and Techniques for Sustainable Engineering” in the Start Cup Campania. This project has been awarded third prize in the Business Plan Competition.
Ilenia’s research interests deal with the development of innovative materials for sustainable constructions. She has conducted experimental studies to demonstrate the employability of plastic fibres obtained from waste plastic as dispersed reinforcement in cementitious materials. Furthermore, she has also developed new fibre geometries, with the aim of enhancing the thermo-mechanical performance of fibre reinforced concrete and mortars. Her current research activity focus on the development of new fiber-reinforced geopolymers using conventional raw materials as well as inorganic waste materials.
She is author of several scientific papers published in international peer-reviewed journal and international conference proceedings.

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