Multidisciplinary Design Optimization: Public Forum

Dear Fellow MDO TC members and Friends,

NAFEMS organization (International Modeling and Simulation Community) is holding an Excellence in Engineering Simulation Student Competition 2026.

(https://www.nafems.org/students/student-awards/americas/)

A 300 word description of the project must be submitted through the NAFEMS website by March 31, 2026. 

This is for undergraduate students with a $1000 prize.

More details are in URL.

Please let me know when you have questions.
Thank you,

               Vladimir Balabanov

📍 Dallas, Texas📅 September 8–11, 2026 https://aescape2026.usacm.org/home

We are excited to invite you to participate in AESCAPE 2026: AIEmpowered Simulations & CAE Applications via Engineering Software 3.0, a brand-new conference hosted by the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM). This event is centered on the rapidly emerging shift in engineering software—moving from traditional rulebased or surrogatedriven tools toward agentic, mechanistic AI systems capable of participating directly in real engineering workflows!

AESCAPE 2026 is designed for researchers, engineers, and industry practitioners working at the intersection of computational mechanics, AI, simulation, design automation, and digital engineering. Whether you are:

• Building LLMpowered CAD or CAE tools,
• Developing AI agents for model setup, orchestration, or design exploration,
• Working on physicsaware foundation models or hybrid physics+AI systems, or
• Integrating AI into certification, traceability, digital twins, manufacturing, or sustainment workflows,

this conference is the place to share your vision and connect with the growing community shaping the next era of engineering software

We encourage submissions across all areas of AIenhanced simulation, modeling, and engineering applications. Minisymposia will cover a broad spectrum of topics relevant to computational mechanics, AI integration, and nextgeneration CAE pipelines.

Please consider contributing an abstract and circulating this call with colleagues who may be interested. Selected abstracts will be published in a special issue of Computational Mechanics.

Abstract submission site: AESCAPE - Abstract Submission

Abstract submission deadline: April 15, 2026! 

We look forward to receiving your abstract and seeing you in Dallas this September!

Organizing Committee:

Chair: Wing Kam Liu (Northwestern University, Co-founder of HIDENN AI, LLC)

Co-chair: 

Sourav Saha (Virginia Tech)

Miguel Bessa (Brown University)

Thomas J.R. Hughes (UT Austin)

Michael Hillman (Karagozian & Case, Inc.)