We were sorry to hear that Professor Heitor Pina had passed away. He was a close collaborator in many Wessex Institute activities, serving on its Board of Directors until his retirement.
Heitor had a wide variety of interests; our point of contact was research in Computational Methods, particularly Boundary Elements. I first met Heitor through a NATO research project with the Instituto Superior Técnico, which afterwards developed further into a series of other initiatives, including the organisation of courses and conferences.
During his time as a member of the WIT Board of Directors, Heitor put forward a number of initiatives which led to further development of our capabilities in fluid mechanics and thermal analysis.
Heitor had a distinguished academic career in his beloved Lisbon, having graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1965 and afterwards completing a PhD in the same institution. He joined the staff of the Instituto where he became a full Professor until his retirement in 2003.
He continued afterwards to be active in research and teaching as a Visiting Professor at the Portuguese Catholic University.
Heitor produced throughout his career, excellent papers on Computational Mechanics and in particular Numerical Methods – such as Finite and Boundary Elements – as well as Optimisation Techniques.
We will always remember with affection his politeness, good humour and excellent manners. We feel privileged to have benefited from his friendship as well as his intellect.
Heitor’s death is a sad loss to the Computational Mechanics community.
Wessex Institute