Dr. Lars Davidsion is a professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences and he has been head of the division of Fluid Dynamics since 2005. The general subject of his research is the computation of fluid flow and heat convective transfer using finite volume computations. He is working with in-house finite volume codes (CALC-BVC, CALC-LES), which have been developed within the group. Turbulence modelling for fluid flow and heat transfer is the focus of his research. Currently, a larger part of the research is concentrated on Large Eddy Simulations (LES). Lately, Dr. Lars has been focused on hybrid LES/RANS, an approach to make it possible to use LES for wall-bounded flows at high Reynolds numbers. Since 2022, he has had to work on Machine Learning to improve wall functions and turbulence models.

With a first degree in Aeronautics, Prof Koulis Pericleous completed a PhD in unsteady aerodynamics in 1978 at Queen Mary College, University of London. His first post-university employment was with Prof D B Spalding’s scientific software company CHAM Ltd, where as part of the development team contributed among others to the development of PHOENICS, the first ever commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
He joined the University of Greenwich, UK in 1989 and over his 30+ year tenure as the professor of CFD, he has enthusiastically promoted CFD as a tool for industry and the environment through both research and teaching. In Greenwich he formed the Computational Science and Engineering research group and brought his knowledge of fluid dynamics into both practical and fundamental research. Recent focus has been the multi-physics world of metals processing, in particular aerospace alloys and light metals. This work encompassed many length scales from macroscale (such as continuous or shape casting, aluminium electrolysis cells and VAR processing), mesoscale (welding and Additive Manufacturing) to microstructure formation (freckle defects, or high undercooled growth).
The complex nature of all these processes led Koulis to develop PHYSICA, a multi-physics code in continuous evolution since 1992.
Koulis has received numerous awards including the TMS 2021 Light Metals Award for his work on “Contactless Ultrasonic Treatment in Direct Chill Casting”, detailing a novel idea of generating fluid flow and ultrasonic cavitation in liquid metals from an external magnetic field. He has supervised over 40 PhD students, co-authored around 400 articles, led many national and international projects, and provided consultancy services to a number of organisations worldwide.

Gavin Tabor is Professor of CFD at the University of Exeter and has spent much of his career developing and promoting CFD and the open source code OpenFOAM. Having started off studying Physics at university (BA Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge, 1990; DPhil Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oxford, 1994), he then worked for 5 years as a postdoc in the research group led by Prof David Gosman at Imperial College, working on CFD for multiphase flow and premixed turbulent combustion. At this time he also began working with and contributing to the code FOAM (Field Operation And Manipulation), later to be released as OpenFOAM.
Appointed as a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Exeter in 1999, he has developed an extensive research programme in CFD in areas as diverse as turbulence modelling, multiphysics, image based meshing, and optimisation. He has also worked on the application of CFD in areas such as biofluid mechanics, sustainable urban drainage and additive manufacture, and collaborated closely with major UK and international companies – current collaborations are with Hydro International (SUDs), Torin Sifan (turbomachinery) and Oxford Instruments (plasma simulation). In addition to the “traditional” area of physics-based simulation in CFD, Prof Tabor’s recent work has also included Machine Learning/Data Science approaches to simulation, including Bayesian Optimisation and Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs).
Prof Tabor continues to be active within the international OpenFOAM community, particularly as Chair of the Joint Technical Committees for OpenFOAM Governance, and on the Editorial Advisory Board for the new OpenFOAM Journal. He is a member of the CCP-WSI+ team building a UK community in numerical Wave-Structure simulation and other coupled multi-physics problems, and also part of the Isambard Tier 2 HPC team. At the University of Exeter he teaches courses on Fluid Mechanics and CFD, and is the Director of Research and Innovation for the Department of Engineering within the Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy (FESE). He is a Fellow of the IOP and both a Chartered Engineer and Physicist.