Dr. Tod A. Laursen is the President of Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Prior to becoming President of Khalifa University, Dr. Laursen was a member of the faculty of Duke University (USA), between the years of 1992 and 2010, during which time he had appointments in civil engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering. He served as Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from 2008-2010, and served as Senior Associate Dean for Education in the Pratt School of Engineering from 2003-2008. In the latter capacity, he had oversight responsibility for all undergraduate and graduate engineering programs at Duke.
Dr. Laursen earned his Ph.D. and M.Sc. postgraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.Sc. in the same subject from Oregon State University. He specializes in computational mechanics, a subfield of engineering mechanics concerned with development of new computational algorithms and tools used by engineers to analyze mechanical and structural systems. He has published over 100 refereed articles, book chapters, and abstracts, and has authored or co-edited two books. His particular focus is development of methods to analyze contact, impact and frictional phenomena, in highly nonlinear and complex systems.
He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the International Association of Computational Mechanics, and the United States Association for Computational Mechanics. He also holds memberships in the American Society for Engineering Education and Tau Beta Pi. He served as an at-large member of the Executive Committee for the United States Association for Computational Mechanics between 2007 and 2010,and currently services as a member of the Executive Council of the International Association for Computational Mechanics (until 2020). Additionally, he has served on the scientific advisory committees of several of the most important national and international congresses in computational mechanics.
VINCENT P. MANNO is Provost and Dean of Faculty, as well as Professor of Engineering, at the Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA. He received a BS from Columbia University and MS, Engineer's and Doctor of Science degrees from M.I.T. His fields of interest are power generation, electronics thermal energy management, manufacturing processes and engineering education policy. He has authored or co-authored over 160 journal articles, conference proceeding papers and technical reports and is a frequent keynote speaker. Prior to joining Olin, Dr. Manno was Associate Provost and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Tufts University. While at Tufts, he also held other leadership positions including Department Chair, Associate Dean of Engineering for Graduate Studies and Dean of Engineering ad interim. He has worked in the private sector, served as a U.S. Navy Senior Summer Faculty Fellow and holds a US patent. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the recipient of SAE’s Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, the Harvey Rosten Award for Excellence in the Thermal Analysis of Electronic Equipment, the ASME Curriculum Innovation Award, the Fischer Award as Tufts Engineering Teacher of the Year, and the Tufts University Seymour Simches Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising. He is an active member of several professional societies and recently completed a term on the Board of the ASEE Engineering Research Council. He currently serves on the advisory boards of Ashesi University (Ghana), the University of Delaware College of Engineering and the Tufts University Center for Engineering Education Outreach.
“Open Learning for Smart Education: Open educational policies, strategies and access for all"
Dr. Christian M. Stracke is Associate Professor for Open Education and Innovation at the Welten Institute of the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) (www.ou.nl/web/welten-institute). In addition he is Advisory Professor at the East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai, and Adjunct Professor at the Korea National Open University (KNOU) in Seoul. As an internationally recognized expert and innovator, his main working fields are Open Education, learning innovations and quality, technology-enhanced learning as well as evaluation, impact measurement and competence modelling in learning, education and training. He holds a PhD in Economics (Dr. rer. pol.) from the University of Duisburg-Essen and a Magister Artium (M.A.) in Educational Sciences from the University of Bonn. He is senior researcher and strategy consultant with international reputation and numerous references for learning policies, innovations and quality in all learning sectors.
Christian M. Stracke has founded and established ICORE, the International Community for Open Education and Research (see: www.ICORE-online.org), promoting and enhancing the vision of openness in research and education worldwide. At many international conferences and events he is invited keynote speaker and PC member and he is Conference Chair of LINQ, the annual international conference on Learning Innovations and Quality (see: www.learning-innovations.eu).
He is author and editor of numerous books, handbook chapters, articles, and standards on learning innovations and quality. In international Standardisation he is elected Chair of international (ISO PC 288 on QM for Education) and of European (CEN TC 353 on (E-)Learning, Education and Training) Standardisation Committees.
He has studied educational sciences and gained extensive experience in leading large scale projects and research teams as well as in consulting and supporting institutions and public authorities to develop long-term policies and to introduce and improve learning innovations and quality.
Many research projects were coordinated and supervised as quality manager by him including ODS (15.3 Mio Euros, see: www.opendiscoveryspace.eu), ISE (budget: 9.8 Mio Euros, see: www.inspiring-science.eu) and Q.E.D. (budget: 4.0 Mio Euros) as three of the biggest e-Learning projects next to many other obtained European research and development projects funded by the EC (amongst them: MOOQ, LELLE, PBL 3.0, ACT, EBE-EUSMOSI, DIGI-FEM, PURE-H2O, ARISTOTELE, LoCloud, VOA3R, AGRICOM, WACOM, Q-Cert-VET, eCOTOOL, COMPAT, SIMBASE, OERTest, OPAL).
He has established eLC, the European Institute for Learning, Innovation and Cooperation (see: www.elc-institute.org) as well as LiLab, the Learning Innovations Lab Collective (www.lilab.eu). He was Co-initiator and Board Member of the German E-Learning Association D-ELAN.
His latest news online at: www.opening-up.education.
| 12 Oct 2015 | Abstract Submission Special Session Proposals |
| 26 Oct 2015 | Invitations to Submit Complete Paper |
| 30 Nov 2015 | Complete Paper Submission Work in Progress Papers Special Session Papers Panels and Workshop Proposals |
| 21 Dec 2015 | Notification of Acceptance |
| 10 Jan 2016 | Author Registration and Payment Deadline |
| 08 Feb 2016 | Final Paper Due |
| 10 Apr 2016 | Pre-conference Workshops |
| 11 Apr 2016 | Conference Opening |
