José Félix Rodríguez Matas was born in Cardón (Venezuela) in 1971. He received the B.E. degree in mechanical engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar, Carcas (Venezuela) in 1993,and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame (USA) in 1999. He was associated professor at Universidad Simón Bolívar from 2001 to 2004. In 2004 he moved to the Mechanical Engineering Department at Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza (Spain) as a Ramón y Cajal fellow, becoming associate professor in 2011. In 2015 he moved to the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” at Politecnico di Milano where he is currently associate professor. His research interests concern numerical methods, the biomechanics of soft tissues, vascular biomechanics, and cardiac electrophysiology. He is particularly involved in the material modelling of soft tissues and nonlinear finite element applications, as well as the development of efficient computational tools for cardiac electrophysiology. He serves as reviewer for a number of peer-review international journals. He is a member of European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) and has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed international journals.

Keywords: continuum mechanics – soft tissues – fine element method