Giuseppe Saccomandi

Giuseppe Saccomandi is Full Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Department of Engineering of the University of Perugia and Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics at the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics at NUI Galway. He was educated at the University of Perugia and spent his youth in Brussels. He has held positions at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the University of Lecce (now University of Salento). He has also held visiting appointments at:

• Université Paris VI and CNRS (1991, 2005, 2006)

• University of Virginia (1999, 2001)

• Aix-Marseille University (2014, 2016, 2024)

• Newton Mathematical Institute, Cambridge (2023)

From 2012 to 2014, he served as External Examiner in Applied Mathematics at NUI Galway, Ireland.

From November 2014 to November 2019, he was Head of the Department of Engineering at the University of Perugia and a member of the Academic Senate during the same period.

His research interests lie in rational mechanics (classical mechanics and rigid body mechanics, symmetries and conservation laws, continuum mechanics, nonlinear elasticity, wave propagation in solids, dispersive media, and rational thermodynamics), applied mathematics (mathematical models in engineering science, industry, biology, and economics), biomechanics (mainly soft tissues and macromolecules of biological interest), and computational methods. In these fields, he has authored or co-authored over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals, five invited book chapters, and numerous conference proceedings papers.

Currently, he is a board member of the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica (INDAM). From 2017 to February 2025, he was Director of the Scientific Council of the Gruppo Nazionale di Fisica Matematica (GNFM) of INDAM. Additionally, he is Past President of the International Society for the Interaction of Mechanics and Mathematics (ISIMM), having served as President from 2017 to 2021.

He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Engineering Science and its satellite journal APPLES (Applications in Engineering Science), together with Josef Malek. He is also Contributing Editor of the International Journal of Nonlinear Mechanics and serves on the editorial boards of Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids and Ricerche di Matematica. He has been Guest Editor for special issues of several journals, including two volumes of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

• Rivlin’s legacy in continuum mechanics and applied mathematics (2019, with M. Destrade and J. Murphy)

• The Ogden model of rubber mechanics: fifty years of impact on nonlinear elasticity (2019, with M. Destrade and L. Dorfmann)

He has organized numerous conferences and workshops, including four Mini-Workshops at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (2002, 2006, 2008, 2019), the INDAM Conferences in Cortona (2003, 2017), and the STAMM-SNP joint conference in Oxford (2018). He has also coordinated three courses at the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM) in Udine:

• Topics in Finite Elasticity (2000)

• Mechanics and Thermomechanics of Rubber-like Solids (2002)

• Nonlinear Waves in Prestressed Materials (2006)

For his 60th birthday (Bari, November 2024), the international conference "Nonlinear Elasticity and All That" has been organized. Furthermore, a special issue of the International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics titled Multiscale and microstructure-inspired constitutive models for soft materials has been published (link).

Saccomandi has been the National Coordinator of several Research Projects of National Interest (PRIN), including:

• PRIN 2004: Mathematical Models for DNA Dynamics

• PRIN 2009: Mathematics and Mechanics of Biological Systems and Soft Tissues

• PRIN 2022: The Mathematics and Mechanics of Wave Propagation in Solids

He was also the Local Coordinator (Perugia Team) for PRIN 2017: Mathematics of Active Materials: From Mechanobiology to Smart Devices.

He has received several awards and fellowships, including:

• France-SSHN Fellowship (2005)

• Senior Fellowship-Prize Ville de Paris (2006)

• Carnot Star Fellowship from Paul Cézanne University, Marseille (2012, 2014, 2024)

• Naval Research Laboratory of the USA Department of Defense Research Publication Award (2018)

• Leverhulme Trust Fellowship (2024, six months)