Michel Bercovier

Michel Bercovier (; 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.

Early life and education Michel Bercovier was born in Lyon, France. He received his BSc 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.

Career Bercovier was an assistant professor at the University of Rouen (1969 - 1972) where he created the Computation Center. From 2010 he is also a professor and head of the school of Computer Science at the Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem.

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. On the former subject, his book with Tanya Matskevitch is at the origin of numerous research on smooth surfaces over arbitrary quadrilateral meshes.

Professional experience 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). (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, a founding member of the Israel Association for Computational Methods in Mechanics and co-founder and chairman of the World User Association in CFD (Computational fluid dynamics).

Honors and awards Chevalier des Palmes Académiques (1986) (with Tanya Matskevich) Smooth Bézier Surfaces over Arbitrary Quadrilateral Meshes Lectures Notes of the UMI, 22, Springer, 2017.

Selected articles Isogeometric analysis with geometrically continuous functions on multi-patch geometries, Kapl, Mario and Buchegger, Florian and Bercovier, Michel and Jüttler, Bert. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering (Vol 316, Pages 209-234), April 2017 Overlapping non Matching Meshes Domain Decomposition Method in Isogeometric Analysis, Bercovier, Michel and Soloveichik, Ilya. February 2015. Efficient simulation of inextensible cloth. Goldenthal, Rony and Harmon, David and Fattal, Raanan and Bercovier, Michel and Grinspun, Eitan. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (Pages 49), 2007 Curve and surface fitting and design by optimal control methods. Alhanaty, Michal and Bercovier, Michel. Computer-Aided Design (Volume 33, Pages 167–182), 2001 Virtual topology operators for meshing. Sheffer, Alla and Bercovier, Michel and BLACKER, TED and Clements, Jan. International Journal of Computational Geometry & Applications (Volume 10, Pages 309–331), 2000 “Discrete” G 1 assembly of patches over irregular meshes. Matskevich, T and Volpin, O and Bercovier, M. Proceedings of the international conference on *Mathematical methods for curves and surfaces II Lillehammer, 1997 (Pages 351–358), 1998 The development of a mechanical model for a tyre: a 15 years story. Bercovier, Michel and Jankovich, Etienne and Durand, Michel. Proceedings of the Second *European Symposium on Mathematics in Industry: ESMI II, March 1–7, 1987, Oberwolfach (Pages 269), 1988 Computer simulation of lamellar keratectomy and laser myopic keratomileusis. Hanna, Khalil D and Jouve, Francois and Bercovier, Michel H and Waring, George O. Journal of refractive surgery (Volume 4, Pages 222–231), 1988 Finite elements and characteristics for some parabolic-hyperbolic problems. Bercovier, Michel and Pironneau, Olivier and Sastri, Vedala. Applied Mathematical Modelling (Volume 7, Pages 89–96), 1983 The vortex method with finite elements. Bardos, Claude and Bercovier, Michel and Pironneau, Olivier. Mathematics of Computation (Volume 36, Pages 119–136), 1981 A finite-element method for incompressible non-Newtonian flows. Bercovier, Michel and Engelman, Michael. Journal of Computational Physics (Volume 36, Pages 313–326), 1980 Error estimates for finite element method solution of the Stokes problem in the primitive variables. Bercovier, Michel and Pironneau, Olivier. Numerische Mathematik (Volume 33, Pages 211–224), 1979 A finite element for the numerical solution of viscous incompressible flows. Bercovier, Michel and Engelman, Michael. Journal of Computational Physics (Volume 30, Pages 181–201), 1979 Perturbation of mixed variational problems. Application to mixed finite element methods. Bercovier, Michel. RAIRO. Analyse numérique (Volume 12, Pages 211–236), 1978

Personal life 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).