Lyesse Laloui is Senior researcher and Lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He obtained his PhD at the Ecole Centrale Paris. He worked at the BRGM (French leader group in surface and subsurface geosciences) and the Ecole Centrale Paris before moving to the EPFL. His background covers contributions in the areas of geomaterial modeling, testing and computational (finite element) methods. He recently co-edited a book on thermal response tests.