Ruth Kasper

Professor

TH Köln, Cologne, Germany

Ruth Kasper is a professor of building construction and structural engineering at TH Köln, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Environmental Technology. She studied civil engineering at RWTH Aachen University and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and completed her doctorate at RWTH Aachen on the load-bearing behavior of glass beams. Her teaching and research focus on glass structures, innovative building materials, and structural design, with particular expertise in the engineering and application of glass in construction. In addition to her academic work, she is a publicly appointed and sworn expert in glass construction and is actively involved in research projects, professional practice, and standardization in the field of structural glass.

Lynda Estes

Spacecraft Transparencies Discipline Lead

NASA, Houston, USA

Lynda Estes has been the NASA engineering expert in integrating windows into human qualified spacecraft for 40 years.  Her career has spanned across the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, the Artemis Orion vehicle, as well as every NASA commercial partner developing human rating spacecraft.  She is an internationally sought resource for design, development, engineering, testing, and operations for high risk, human rated pressure cabins in both aviation and spaceflight.  Lynda is the author of the NASA-STD-5018, the governing requirements document that ensures high structural reliability in spacecraft glass window designs.  Lynda has earned numerous awards for her rigorous and dedicated efforts to ensure the safety of spaceflight, including two NASA Exceptional Service Medals, two Spaceflight Awareness Awards, A Silver Snoopy, and a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal.

Liesbeth Janssen

Associate Professor

TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Liesbeth Janssen holds the chair of Soft Matter and Biological Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology. Her group employs theory, simulations, and machine-learning methods to study the statistical physics of disordered systems, including glassy, active, and living materials. She obtained her PhD with honors in theoretical chemistry in 2012, after which she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, New York and the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. She has received multiple awards throughout her career, including the Unilever Research Prize, Mildred Dresselhaus Award, NWO Vidi grant, and NWO Athena Award, and she was elected as member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.