Dr. Rami Haj-Ali is the Nathan Cummings Professor of Mechanics at Tel-Aviv University. He received his BSc-ME from the Technion, MSc from Tel-Aviv University (TAU), and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1996. He was an Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) from 1997-2010 and from 2008-current as a Full Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University. Dr. Haj-Ali has published over 200 research papers and technical reports, and over 100 refereed archival publications. He was the advisor to more than 40 MSc students and 18 former PhDs (6 of which are current faculty positions in the USA, Korea, and Israel). His research interests include: Nonlinear and damage modeling of composite materials and structures, Micromechanics, Computational Mechanics, Bio-materials, and Biomechanics of Aortic Valves (AVs). His research attracted support from several competitive and industrial sponsors, including the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Israel Ministry of Science (MOST), German-Israel Foundation (GIF), European Union (EU-FP7), NASA, Lockheed Martin, Rafael, Edwards Lifesciences Co., among others. He has won numerous awards, including the Chester P. Siess Award for outstanding PhD and research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1997), the National Science Foundation (NSF-USA) CAREER award (1999), the Maof Fellow from PBC-Kahanoff Foundation (2008) and the Marie Curie Fellow from the EU-IRG-FP7 (2009), and the Nathan Cummings Endowed Chair of Mechanics at TAU (2016). His current research group includes 5 PhDs and 10 MSc students.