Institute Format

     The workshop was held in Florianopolis, a resort island off the coast of Brazil from Sunday 19 October 2003, to Thursday 30 October 2003. Thirty advanced graduate students from the US and South America attended. Researchers from industry, government laboratories and universities also were invited to lecture bringing the total attendance to around 50 (see group photo). The mornings featured lectures on the fundamental disciplines needed to address damage prognosis (see the agenda). The afternoons of the featured lectures on applications of component technologies related to damage prognosis and time for student groups to form. During the first week, each student participant was paired up into a group, assigned a mentor from the speakers, given an application (either an airplane wing subject to fatigue or a building structure subject to an earthquake load) and asked to apply the topic of an assigned fundamental lecture to the damage prognosis problem for that application. The students then summarized their findings during the last day and a half. Note that each Wednesday afternoon was free for informal discussions with the mentoring groups and students. PDF files of all of the presentations can be found under “Slides of Lectures” on this web site.