Abstract: Some basic concepts and standard methods that have been used to build recent theories on advanced materials, are revisited by incorporating in the original formulations higher-order gradients, stochasticity and fractal/fractional considerations. Some representative examples are analyzed to show the potential of these ideas to model new phenomena and interpret experimental observations not described by classical theories.

Biography: Elias C. Aifantis is currently an Emeritus Professor of Mechanics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki/Greece and Michigan Technological University/USA, as well as Mercator fellow at Friedrich-Alexander University/Germany and a Distinguished Professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture/China. Formerly, he has also been a Distinguished Faculty Advisor at King Abdulaziz University/Saudi Arabia, Distinguished Visiting Expert at ITMO University/Russia and Southwest Jiaotong University/China, as well as MegaGrant Director at Togliatti State University /Russia.

He has promoted highly interdisciplinary work in mechanics of materials by bringing into the field of solid mechanics ideas from diffusion theory, chemical reactions, and nonlinear physics. He has coined the terms dislocation patterning, material instabilities, gradient plasticity/elasticity, chemo/nanomechanics, and pioneered internal length gradient (ILG) theories in these fields. Currently, he is extending the ILG framework to revisit electromagnetism and Maxwell’s equations, as well as gravitation and Newton’s Law.

He has published over 339 articles and received about 12,778 citations with 55 h-index (Scopus); 11,963 citations with 54 h-index (Web of Science); 19,750 citations with 69 h-index (Google Scholar). He is included in the ISI Web of knowledge list of the world’s most highly cited authors in engineering.