Mr. Silvain Michel graduated in mechanical engineering at ETH - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 1989. After ten years as a fatigue and damage tolerance specialist in the aerospace industry, he joined Empa - Materials Science and Technology in 2000. Between 2003 and 2008, he was head of the Electro Active Polymer research group within the Mechanical Systems Engineering lab at Empa. Since 2009, he has worked as a senior scientist, responsible for various projects on fatigue, fracture mechanics, durability, damage tolerance of metalic and composite materials and systems.