Born in France, the author grew up in Antwerp, Belgium, and graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) with a degree in civil and aeronautical engineering, specializing in structures. He later completed his ScD in Technology at the Faculty of Aeronautical Engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), and worked for five years in ... Read morestructural engineering and integrity at Israel Aircraft Industries. He joined the Department of Solid Mechanics, Materials and Structures of Tel Aviv University in 1977, where he has been a faculty member ever since. He was the first head of the then newly established School of Mechanical Engineering and is currently Professor Emeritus at that school. The author has taught basic and advanced undergraduate courses in structural analysis and aircraft analysis and design, as well as graduate courses in finite-element analysis and structural optimization. He has also taught structures courses to architectural students at the Faculty of Architecture at the Technion and at the School of Architecture of Tel Aviv University. He has been a visiting assistant professor at the School of Engineering at UCLA, a visiting scholar at the Engineering Department of Cambridge University and a visiting professor at the Joseph Fourier Universite de Grenoble. He was a founding member of the ISSMO (International Society of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization) and has been a regular contributor to its conferences and meetings. His research field is the design of optimal structures, in which he has published over 50 papers. Show Less