Eugenio Oñate

After completing a degree in Civil Engineering in July 1975 at the Technical Univ. of Valencia (Spain), he started postgraduate studies at the Civil Engineering Dept. of Swansea University, Wales, UK. There he completed in June 1976 a Master of Science degree (M.Sc. Thesis on Development of a finite strip method for analysis of bridges and folded plate structures) and later a Ph.D. degree (Dec. 1978) under the supervision of Prof. O. C. Zienkiewicz (Ph. D. Thesis on Plastic flow in metals with special reference to: I) Coupled thermal flow. II) Thin sheet metal forming). His Ph.D. studies were funded by an Alcoa Research Grant from USA.

In February 1979 he moved to the Technical University of Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain, where he was hired as an Associated Professor on Structural Mechanics at the School of Civil Engineering. He became a Full Professor with tenure on June 1983. From March 1983 to March 1989 he was the Director of the School of Civil Engineering at UPC. During that period and under his personal supervision the new premises of the Civil Engineering School (? 20.000 m2) were designed and built in the new campus of UPC.

On March 1987 he founded CIMNE (International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering, www.cimne.com), a research center specialized in the development and application of numerical methods in engineering. This center has grown to employ some 250 scientists and engineers from 25 different countries worldwide specialized in research activities in different fields of engineering and science (civil, mechanical, aerospace and naval engineering, bio-medical engineering, food engineering, etc.). CIMNE has received many prestigious Awards in Cataluña and by the European Commission.

In 2002 he created the CIMNE Classroom Network. The CIMNE Classrooms are physical spaces jointly created by CIMNE and a University for the development of training, research and technology transfer activities (see www.cimne.com for further details). The CIMNE Classroom Network incorporates nowadays 30 centers created between CIMNE and universities in Spain and in several Latin American countries (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru). The CIMNE Classrooms are a unique instrument for scientific and technical cooperation between research, academic and industrial organizations in Europe and Latin-American.

Has supervised 73 Ph.D. Theses and 115 Master Theses. 57 of his former students are now full professors in Universities in Spain (22), UK (2), other European countries (9), USA (6), Asia-Pacific (3) and Latin America (15). He has had a significant impact in the creation of new scientific groups in cooperation with his former students.

In 1989 he was the founder and first President of the Spanish Association for Numerical Methods in Engineering (SEMNI, www.cimne.upc.es/semni). Under his presidency (1989- 2004) SEMNI became the largest association in Europe in the field of Numerical Methods in Engineering. SEMNI has organized 8 congresses in the field. On June 2004 he was appointed Honorary President of SEMNI. In July 2005 he was appointed Honorary Member of the Portuguese Association of Theoretical, Applied and Computational Mechanics (APMTAC) as recognition of his work towards the unification of APMTAC and SEMNI conferences which are jointly held since 1983 and typically attract some 400 scientists and engineers.

He was one of the founders and first Vice-President (1993-95) of the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS, www.eccomas.org). In the period 2000-2004 he was the President of ECCOMAS. On September 2000 he organized the third ECCOMAS Congress in Barcelona which attracted some 1500 participants.

In the period 1994-2002 he was the Secretary General of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM, www.iacm.info). Since September 2002 he is the President of the IACM. On July 2006 he was re-elected as President of the IACM for a new four year period. During his mandate as Secretary General and President of IACM he has supervised the organization of the World Congresses of Computational Mechanics of the IACM held in Tokyo (1994), Buenos Aires (1998), Vienna (2002), Peking (2004), Los Angeles (2006), Venice (2008) and Sidney (2010).

His research activities have spread over a range of multidisciplinary fields which he has contributed relevant theories and methods of scientific and industrial relevance. His key research lines are the following:

– Development of innovative finite element methods for analysis and optimal design of structures with standard and composite materials . Applications to shells, buildings, dams, bridges, tunnels, harbours, geomechanics, inflatable structures and vehicle structures (cars, airplanes, trains, ships).

– New rotation-free triangular finite elements for analysis of plate and shell structures .

– New stabilized finite element methods based on finite calculus for fluids and incompressible solids.

– Development of innovative numerical methods for optimal design of manufacturing processes . Applications to sheet metal forming, casting, forging, rolling and extrusion of metallic products.

– Development of innovative numerical methods combining particle-based methods, discrete element methods and finite element methods for coupled problems in engineering . Applications to aeroelastic analysis of airplanes and flexible structures (tall buildings, slender bridges and aero-generator blades); hydrodynamic analysis of ships; fluid-structure interaction problems with application to harbour and marine engineering and to constructions under flooding situations; excavation problems in civil and mining engineering and coupled thermalflows in industrial and environmental problems.

– Modelling and simulation of the melting and burning of objects with the particle finite element method .

– Development of decision support systems in engineering integrating data-bases, numerical methods, wireless sensors and artificial intelligence techniques. Applications to the risk prediction and management of floods, sea spills , energy consumption in cities and bio-medical engineering.

The above research lines have been developed in the framework of over 900 RTD projects carried out in cooperation with the main engineering companies in Spain and worldwide. Some 150 of these projects have been developed in the framework of EC programmes.

In parallel with the RTD activities, Eugenio Oñate has organized as chair person 45 international congresses on topics closely related with the above RTD lines. See list of congresses in www.cimne.com .

He has published 399 papers in scientific journals. He has written 4 text books and is the editor of 60 books in different topics of Computational Engineering Mechanics. He is the editor of three scientific journals (one of which is published by Springer) and 3 books series in Computational Mechanics. He is the author of 71 chapters in books, 67 monographs, 627 papers in conference proceedings and 241 research reports .

PUBLICATIONS
He has published 491 papers in JCR journals with 19117 (35658) citations (information at 10.09.2024).  He has an h index of 67 (87). Citations and h-index source: First number: Scopus, In brackets: Google Scholar. He has published 251 papers in Q1 and 201 papers in D1 (source: Scopus).

No. OF PAPERS IN TERMS OF CITATIONS (C)
Google Scholar (Scopus): 20 < C ≤ 50, 179 (100) papers; 50 < C ≤ 150, 112 (72) papers; 150< C≤ 300, 23 (13) papers; 300< C≤ 1000, 14 (3) papers, 1000< C, 3 (1) papers. One paper cited 3682 times (Scopus).

He is regularly invited to deliver Keynote (Plenary) Lectures in the main International Conferences in Computational Engineering Science (45 Plenary Lectures and 40 Keynote lectures in the last 35 years).

His research work has been recognized in many Prizes and Awards.

LEADERSHIP IN INDUSTRIAL INNOVATION. In addition, to his scientific activity he has developed an intensive task in the transfer of the outcome of his research to the industrial sector. He has been personally involved in the creation of several spin-off companies in Spain. These companies are operating with success in the international market distributing and applying software products and practical outcomes derived from the research at CIMNE. He has launched 19 spin-off companies in Spain: 6  prior to 2008 and 13 in  2010-2021 (www.cimne.com/vpage/2/0/Technology/Spin-off-Companies). The more successful of the initial set of companies are: Structuralia ( www.structuralia.com ) specialized in e-learning services for the construction sector (sold to the Kaplan Group (US) in 2010) ; COMPASS ( www.compassis.com ) specialized in software for naval and construction sectors; Quantech ATZ ( www.quantech.es ) specialized in software for manufacturing and aerospace sectors; BuildAir ( www.buildair.com ) specialized in design and construction of textile membrane and inflatable structures (sold in 2022) and INGENIA ( www.ingenia.aero ) specialized in consulting services in aeronautics.

In 2011 he created CIMNE Tecnología. SA (www.cimnetecnologia.com) specialized in the transfer to market of CIMNE outputs. In 2011-2021 this company created 11 spin-off companies. Among these we note: Lyncos SL (2012) (Internet of Things; www.lhings.com ), Energy Management Systems SL (www.inergybcn.com), PMS SL (2013) (inflatable multimedia pavilions, www.portablemultimediasolutions.com), Pneumatic Structures Technology SL (2015) (www.ps-technologies.com); Fresh Water Nature S.L. (2014) (desalinization & purification of sea and waste water, www.freshwaternature.com); Inloc Robotics SL(2015) (www.inlocrobotics.com), Scipedia SL (2016) (open science publishing, www.scipedia.com) and OKTICS (2019) (digital signage technology, www.okobusiness.com). The CIMNE spin-off companies  fostered by E. Oñate employ 175 workers, including 19 Post-Docs (info at December 20^th 2022).

Ongoing Theses Supervised by E. Oñate

Completed PhD Theses Supervised by E. Oñate