Leszek F. Demkowicz is Assistant Director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) and holder of W. A.``Tex''Moncrief, Jr. Chair in Computational Engineering and Sciences II. He is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and also a Professor in the Department of Mathematics, at the University of Texas at Austin. He has an M.S. in mathematics from Jagiellonian University and M.S. (Hons.), Ph.D. and Sc.D. degrees in mechanics from Cracow University of Technology, Poland. Prior to joining the University of Texas faculty, he held various positions at Cracow University of Technology. In the years 1991-1993, he was the head of Section of Applied Mathematics and the Director of Computer Center.

Dr. Demkowicz has authored or co-authored five books. In particular he authored a monograph on adaptive methods (1986, in Polish) and co-authored with Prof. J.T. Oden a textbook on Functional Analysis (CRS Press, 1996, second edition 2010). He also co-edited two books. Dr. Demkowicz is a co-author of over 200 journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and technical reports in the general area of computational mechanics and mathematics. He is the Editor in Chief of Computers and Mathematics with Applications and Associate Editor of ten international journals. Dr. Demkowicz was the founding member of the Polish Association for Computational Mechanics and served as its first President. He is a fellow of both U.S. and International Associations for Computational Mechanics and a member of several other professional organizations. He has graduated sixteen Ph.D. and numerous M.S. students.

His work and scientific interests span across numerical analysis, adaptive finite element methods, and wave propagation problems, including acoustics, elastodynamics and electromagnetics. Among other applications, Dr. Demkowicz and his group have developed original numerical methods for structural vibrations, analysis of acoustics of the human ear, dynamic modeling of gears, analysis of optical waveguides, calculation of Radar Crossections, borehole electromagnetics, and acoustics. He has given numerous invited talks on these subjects. His work has been sponsored by the NSF, Navy, Air Force, DOE, Schlumberger, Baker-Hughes, and Boeing. His research on high accuracy adaptive methods was summarized in a two volume book - "Computing with hp Elements" (Chapman & Hall, Vol. I - 2006, Vol. II - 2007). For his work on hp methods, he was awarded the Zienkiewicz Medal by PACM and the Computational Sciences Award by USACM (both in 2009).

In 2009, in collaboration with Jay Gopalakrishnan from the University of Florida, Dr. Demkowicz co-invented the DPG method with optimal test functions which has been the focus of his research for the last four years.