Shaofan Li is Professor of Applied and Computational Mechanics in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Berkeley, USA. He gained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University, Illinois, in 1997, having previously earned his MSc in Aerospace Engineering. His current research interests include Meshfree Simulations of Adiabatic Shear Band and Spall Fracture, Simulations of Stem Cell Differentiations, and Multiscale Non-equilibrium Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics. Dr Li is the author of numerous articles and conference proceedings.

Dong Qian is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Graduate Study for the Mechanical Engineering Program at the University of Cincinnati, USA. He obtained his BS degree in Bridge Engineering in 1994 from Tongji University in China. He came to US in 1996 and obtained M.S. degree in civil engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1998. Dr. Qian is a member of the US association for computational mechanics and ASME. He has published over 40 journal papers and book chapters. His research interests include nano-scale modeling, simulation and applications, meshfree methods, and development of multi-scale methods in solid mechanics.