Dr. Majid R. Ayatollahi (PhD, University of Bristol, UK, 1998) is distinguished professor and director of fatigue and fracture research laboratory in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). His main fields of interest are fracture mechanics, and experimental and computational solid mechanics. Professor Ayatollahi is the author of a book published by Springer International in 2016 titled "Characterization of Carbon Nanotube-Based Composites Under Consideration of Defects".With an h-index=40, he has published more than 200 fully refereed papers in well-known international (ISI) journals (according to Scopus) and more than 300 papers in the proceedings of national and international conferences. He is currently a member of the editorial boards for seven international journals and has served as reviewer for more than 40 international journals. Professor Ayatollahi received a prestigious award as "National Distinguished Professor" in the year 2014 from the Iranian ministry of science, research and technology, a highly competitive award in Iran. In addition, he has achieved several awards from IUST as distinguished professor/researcher in different years. Professor Ayatollahi also received in five consecutive years a prestigious national award from the Iranian Society of Mechanical Engineers for supervising the best theses in mechanical engineering. He was member of the university research council at IUST for ten years and is currently the Iran's representative in the Asian Society of Experimental Mechanics. His research lab is now in international research collaboration with several renowned European and East Asian institutions. He has been invited as keynote speaker in several international conferences and universities.