| Michel Bercovier | |
| Birth Date: | 10 September 1941 |
| Nationality: | Israeli, French |
| Workplaces: | Hebrew University, Hadassah Academic College |
| Alma Mater: | Paris University, University of Rouen |
Michel Bercovier (Hebrew: מישל ברקוביאר; born: 10 September 1941) is a French-Israeli Professor (Emeritus) of Scientific Computing and Computer Aided Design (CAD) in The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Bercovier is also the head of the School of Computer Science at the Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem.
Michel Bercovier was born in Lyon, France. He received his B.Sc in Mathematics from Paris University in 1964. He was from 1964 to 1965 vice president of Union of French Jewish Students and co-principal editor of its magazine Kadima.During the years 1965-67 he served in the French Army. He earned his D. Es Sc. in 1976 at the Faculté des Sciences de Rouen. Bercovier authored the thesis Régularisation duale des problèmes variationnels mixtes (Dual regularization of mixed variational problems), under the supervision of Jacques-Louis Lions. He belongs to the second generation of Lions' students.[1]
Bercovier was an assistant professor at the University of Rouen (1969 - 1972) where he created the Computation Center.He emigrated to Israel in 1973 and was director of applications and services at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Computer Center (1973 - 1976). He joined the School of Applied Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a Lecturer in 1977, becoming an associate professor in 1983, and moved to its Institute of Computer Science in 1986. From 1997 until 2006 he held the Bertold Badler Chair of Computer Science as a full professor. In 1996-1998 Bercovier set up the Computer Science department of a new university at Paris-La Defense (Pôle universitaire Léonard de Vinci). From 1999 to 2007 he was in charge of the W3C office in Israel, and thus very active in the development of the Internet. He retired from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007 as an emeritus professor. From 2010 he is also a professor and head of the school of Computer Science at the Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem.Bercovier has advised more than 30 M.Sc. and 16 Ph.D. students.
Professor Bercovier's research work focuses on Computer Aided Design and in Scientific Computation.He developed new Finite Element Methods for fluid flows and incompressible materials based on penalty and reduced integration methods that are universally implemented.Together with Pironneau, Olivier he proved the optimality of the Hood Taylor finite element for incompressible fluids. He has made contributions to the integration of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Analysis, developed new methods in surface design, integrated optimal control methods in CAD and cloth simulation for animation.
He has been involved in multidisciplinary research, teaming with surgeons, biologists and pharmacologists (artificial heart valve modeling, Ca+ discharge in axons, keratotomical surgery, drug release models).
Bercovier carries joint research with INRIA, Pierre and Marie Curie University, EPFL, IMATI-Pavia, Institute of Applied Geometry (Johannes Kepler University Linz) and MIT, among others.
He is currently involved in several aspects of Isogeometric Analysis, such as smooth surfaces on arbitrary meshes and Domain Decomposition methods on arbitrarily overlapping domains. On the former subject, his book with Tanya Matskevitch is at the origin of numerous research on smooth surfaces over arbitrary quadrilateral meshes.
Parallel to his academic work, Bercovier has been involved in industrial research: he was Chief Consultant for Kleber and Michelin (1972 – 1985), Hutchinson (1990-2017), Pechiney (1992-2017), L’Oréal (1996-2013).
He also contributed to the creation of several Hi-Tech companies: FDI (now part of Ansys, a US company, was based on his research, as was Bercom, a leading CAD/CAE Israeli firm. Bercovier was also the chairman of Aleph Yissum (now Ex Libris) in the years 1986 - 1996, and was active in turning the small start up into the leader in computer systems for libraries.
He contributed to the creation of the R&D team of Visiowave (Lausanne), which was acquired by General Electric.He is on the editorial board of several scientific journals. He is a member of SIAM, European Mathematical Society and ACM, on the board of SIA (Automotive Engineering Society in France) and ECCOMAS. He was a visiting fellow for long periods at IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation and Matra. He was a member of the scientific council of AMIES, Agency for Interaction in Mathematics with Business and Society,[2] a founding member of the Israel Association for Computational Methods in Mechanics[3] and co-founder and chairman of the World User Association in CFD (Computational fluid dynamics).[4] [5]
Bercovier is the author of over 80 papers and 3 books.
Bercovier is divorced, has three sons and lives in Jerusalem. His brother, Herve Bercovier, is a Professor (Emeritus) in the faculty of medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Michel Bercovier is a co-founder and Honorary President of the Association du Festival Lyrique de Montperreux(fr).