Stelios Kyriakides is currently the John Webb Jennings Chair in Engineering and Professor n Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics for the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the Director of the Research Center for Mechanics of Solids, Structures, and Materials at UT. Stelios has had over 35 years involvement with the offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry world-wide. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard and California Institute of Technology. He earned a B.Sc. (1st Class Honors) in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Bristol, a MS and PhD, both in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. He is active in many journals including Elsevier's Applied Ocean Research and the International Journal of Solids and Structures.