Dr. El Kadiri, Haitham is a Whiteside and Coleman Associate Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Mississippi State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Ecole des Mines de Paris (ParisTech) in France. He received his DEA-Masters in the Shaping Center (CEMEF) at the same school in Materials Science and Physics. Dr. El Kadiri authored and co-authored over 90 papers since 2004. His research is driven by an interest to develop a fundamental understanding of how interfaces govern the behavior of polycrystalline microstructures under the influence of stress, temperature, and aggressive environment, with the rigor needed to identify advanced numerical models at the mesoscale such as crystal plasticity and phase field. This exercise requires often a combined multiscale characterization and modeling approach, because there are key mechanisms that operate at different scales. Current work focuses on leveraging knowledge of interfacial problems to several areas including interactions involving slip, twinning, and grain boundaries in hexagonal close-packed structures, interfacial defect theory, bi-crystallography, grain boundary atomic structure, damage, multi physics involved in high-temperature oxidation, interdiffusion, growth stresses, fatigue crack growth, phase transformations, and interfacial instability. Dr. El Kadiri has led several teams in the area of multiscale modeling applied to several contemporary industrial issues, with a down-top paradigm for science and a top-down paradigm for engineering. He developed an interest in both the sharp interface and diffusive interface approaches. His passion is to use applied mathematics to model a natural evolving system after a fundamental understanding supported by experimentation.