About Us 

Our Group successfully organised the second Mechanics and Machine Learning Workshop (M2L) in July 2025. Invited talks were delivered by Prof. JF Molinari (EPFL), Prof. Zahra Sharif Khodaei (Imperial College), Prof. Ghatu Subhash (Uni. of Florida), Dr Souvik Chakraborty (IIT Delhi), Dr Sathis Ponnusami (City) and Dr Sid Kumar (TU Delft).  Supported by UKRI-EPSRC and the British Council, the interactive hybrid event was well-attended by over 70 researchers across the UK, Europe, USA and India.

Dr Sathiskumar Ponnusami delivered an invited talk at the Machine Learning for Mechanics workshop at Queen Mary, University of London, sponsored by the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research. His talk focussed on how physical simulations and machine learning models should go hand-in-hand to realise reliable and faster simulations in solid mechanics and materials engineering problems. The workshop involved talks by academics from other universities such as Imperial College, Queen Mary, and Brunel University. 

Dr Sathiskumar Ponnusami delivered an invited seminar (Solid Mechanics and Materials Seminar) at the University of Oxford. He spoke about his research on multifunctionalities in aerospace composites, while emphasising the effectiveness of modelling and simulation tools for the design of such multifunctional material/structural systems. We had great discussions with colleagues around potential collaborations on the mechanics of high-temperature materials and composites.

Dr Sathiskumar Ponnusami was invited by the UK Foreign Office to the British Ambassador’s Residence (Villa Wolkonsky) in Rome to participate in a panel discussion and present at a UK-Italy AI event. The purpose is to foster collaboration between the UK and Italy in AI with an increasing emphasis on the recent UK-Italy joint declaration and MoU on Bilateral Cooperation.  The event was organised by the British Embassy in Rome and the UK Science and Innovation Network, in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, Italy’s Future AI research Institute (FAIR), and the Italian Ministry of Research and Universities. 

Sathiskumar was an awardee of the UK-Italy Trustworthy AI Exchange Researcher programme 2023/2024, coordinated by The Alan Turing Institute and the UK Foreign Office, to develop such collaborations with Italy. He presented his research on AI applications for the design of aerospace materials, structures and systems. In the invited panel discussion,  he highlighted the routes to establishing collaborations between the UK and Italy in Applied AI through Horizon Europe. 

Our Group organised the first workshop on 'Mechanics and Machine Learning'. The workshop was attended by more than 50 researchers with invited talks delivered by academics from City (Dr Ponnusami and Dr Yan), EPFL (Prof. Molinari and Dr Garcia Suarez), and the University of Florida (Prof. Subhash). Academics from EPFL and Florida spend a month at our Group exchanging research ideas and having active discussions.

Dr Sathiskumar Ponnusami is appointed as an Associate Editor for Mechanics of Materials Journal (MECMAT) effective from January 2024.  MECMAT (2025 IF 4.1), established in 1982, is one of the classical decades-old mechanics journals publishing articles on flow, fracture, and constitutive behaviour of materials.