Richard Wan is Professor with the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada. He sits on the Editorial Board of several international journals and was the Vice-Chair of the TC103 (Numerical Methods) of the ISSMGE from 2009-2017.François Nicot is a graduate from « Centrale de Lyon »school. He joined Cemagref (now IRSTEA) in 2000, where he currently works as Research Director.He has been Editor-in-Chief of the international journal "European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering" since 2009, and co-directs the GDRI (international research group) GeoMech since 2008.Author of more than 150 international publications, his research focuses on the geomechanics and behavior of granular materials.Felix Darve obtained his Master's degree from Ecole Centrale Paris (1971), followed by a PhD in Grenoble (1978) on the constituent relations of geomaterials. He was promoted professor of exceptional rank at the Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble.He is former director of the National School of Hydraulics and Mechanics of Grenoble, the national laboratory of CNRS GRECO "Geomaterials" and the European network of laboratories ALERT "Geomaterials". He was deputy director of the department "Mechanics" at the Ministry of Research.Currently, F. Darve is editor-in-chief of Int. J. Num. and Anal. Meth. In geomechanics (Wiley publ.). He has edited or co-edited 14 books, published by Elsevier, Springer, Hermes, Iste, Balkema, ... and has written or co-authored 260 articles in peer-reviewed journals or book chapters.His three main topics of interest are (i) the development of incrementally non-linear constitutive relationships, (ii) the analysis of bifurcations, instabilities and failures in granular materials and (iii) the modeling of three-phase granular media.