Hiromichi Itou is Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Tokyo University of Science. He is a representative member of The Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (JSIAM). His research interests lie in the areas of Fracture Mechanics, Singular integral equations, Analysis of singularities of corner and crack, theory of elasticity, Inverse problems.Shiro Hirano is Assistant professor in the College of Science and Engineering at the Ritsumeikan University. His research interests lie in the areas of Mathematical modeling of earthquake fault mechanics, Data analysis of seismicity, Laboratory seismology, Earthquake engineering.Masato Kimura is the Full Professor in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Kanazawa University. He is a representative member of The Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (JSIAM) and a leader of analysis group in Kanazawa Mathematics and mathematical science Research Group (KMRG). His research interests include moving boundary problems (mean curvature flow, Hele-Shaw problem, Stefan problem etc.), numerical analysis for PDE (FDM, FEM, BEM etc.) singular perturbation for elliptic eigenvalue problems with large drift, crack problems in fracture mechanics, shape derivative and its application, bulk-surface system, inverse Cauchy transform of domains, pattern formation in reaction diffusion systems, mathematical analysis of particle methods.Victor A. Kovtunenko, PhD (1997), Habilitation (2007) is working at the Lavrentyev Institute of Hydrodynamics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW). He currently serves as a Project Leader of the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) at the Institute for Mathematics and Scientific Computing at the University of Graz. His research interests include variational inequalities, shape and topology optimization, nonsmooth and numerical optimization, applications to solid mechanics.Alexandr M. Khludnev is a head of laboratory at the Lavrentyev Institute of Hydrodynamics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Simultaneously he has a part time professor position at Novosibirsk State University. His research interests include variational inequalities, shape and topology optimization, crack problems, contact and free boundary problems in solid mechanics.
