Interview with Javier Llorca

Meet your new Editor in Chief Javier Llorca, IMDEA Materials Institute, Spain

We took this opportunity to interview Javier to discover his vision for the journal!

1. What attracted you to becoming the new Editor in Chief for MSMSE?

MSMSE has always been one of my reference journals and I have been involved with the journal as a member of the international advisory board for many years now trying to help out so MSMSE becomes an efficient tool to disseminate knowledge. I understand the position of Editor in Chief as another step to serve the scientific community working in modelling and simulation in materials science and engineering.

2. Why did you choose to pursue materials modelling?

Since I began to work on my doctoral thesis on fatigue of steels (many years ago), I realized that the key issue in materials science and engineering is to establish the processing-microstructure-properties link. From a quantitative viewpoint, models (mathematical idealizations of the physical processes) are the tool to achieve this objective. Realistic material models are so complex which have to be solved by means of numerical simulations. Thus, modelling and simulation is close to the nucleus of materials science and engineering and I decided that it was worth working in this area.

MSMSE

3. What do you see as the key characteristics of MSMSE?

MSMSE was founded more than 25 years ago at a time when modeling and simulation of materials were taking off as a result of the maturity of new simulation tools (density functional theory, molecular mechanics, Monte Carlos methods, finite elements, etc.) and the ever-increasing power of digital computers. During these years, MSMSE has attracted a lot of pioneer papers on these topics and has been leading the field of multiscale modelling. This is particularly important in the case of materials because their properties (particularly the structural properties) often depend on phenomena that span over many orders of magnitude in length and time scales. The main results of these efforts have led to the development of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering, a holistic approach to accelerate materials development, transform the engineering design optimization process and unify design and manufacturing.

4. What do you think will be the emerging areas that MSMSE will be targeting in the next five years?

Modelling and simulation of materials have grown very rapidly in recent years, becoming an indispensable resource for designing new materials and optimizing traditional ones. New tools have appeared (machine learning, data-driven simulations, digital twins) and multiscale approaches are now used to design multifunctional materials (where chemistry, physics and biology meet), while new problems have appeared as a result of this progress (uncertainty quantification). MSMSE will make an effort to be sure that these emerging areas are dealt with in the papers published in the journal.

5. What is your long-term vision for the journal?

Multiscale modelling has always been in the genome of MSMSE because the microstructure and the properties of materials can only be tackled from a perspective that takes into account all the length and time scales involved. Thus, I would like to expand the status of MSMSE in multiscale modelling into areas that are not well covered currently. They include microstructural evolution during processing (particularly of novel manufacturing strategies based on 3D printing), soft materials and polymers, functional properties (corrosion, electrical and thermal conductivity, etc.) and even biology.