Dr. Alex Elías-Zúñiga

Dr. Alex Elías-Zúñiga Elías graduated as a Mechanical Engineer in 1983 from Tecnológico de Pachuca. Dr. Elias then entered Tec de Monterrey in 1985, where he was awarded his Master's Degree in 1986. He was highly motivated to work in the field of nonlinear phenomena and was attracted by the research work by Millard Beatty, a former Ph. D. student of Professor Jerald L. Ericksen, and then entered the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he obtained his Ph. D degree in 1994. His experience at Tec de Monterrey involves teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, performing applied research, and providing industrial consulting services to local or international firms. Dr. Elias served as the Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department from 2001 to April 2008, and then, he was promoted to the Director of the Engineering Doctorate Ph. D. program (2008-2012). Under his leadership, this graduate program was recognized by the Mexican Research Council (Conacyt) as one of the Top Ten Engineering Graduate Programs in Mexico. His research interests focus mainly on the areas of nonlinear material behavior where he has been working on deriving constitutive material models based on statistical mechanics and the concept of equivalent materials. He has been able to characterize nanocomposite materials that are commonly used in biomedical and engineering applications both theoretically and experimentally.