Young Investigators Conferences, organized in partnership with ECCOMAS (European Community of Computational Methods in Applied Sciences), are a new series of scientific events. They focus on applications of mathematical and computational methods and modeling to different areas of simulation in engineering. They mainly aim at bringing together junior researchers and PhD students in the field in order to encourage discussion, collaboration, and interchange of ideas by the young generation. The participation of senior scientists sharing their experience is also considered very useful and fruitful.

After the 1st Young Investigators Conference which was held in April 2012 in Aveiro (Portugal), YIC 2013 is the 2nd Young Investigators Conference. It is characterized by the introduction of new creative and innovative formats listed below.

• In order to facilitate understanding of the talks and discussions between participants, each mini-symposium will be introduced by a 30 min talk given by a junior scientist working in the field. He will thus share his own vision on the research domain (overview, main features and objectives, research challenges, …).

• Some of the plenary talks will have an unusual format with the presence of an opponent, whose objective will be to question the speaker (during the talk) and highlight scientific issues. We hope this theatrical format will increase the quality and the clarity of the talk.

• A "lightning talk" session will be proposed before the welcome cocktail (Monday afternoon). In this specific session, speakers will have a limited time (less than 5 min) and very few slides to present a scientific problem, a research solution, or ongoing research work. The idea is to introduce topics to be discussed between participants during the welcome cocktail.

• A "software" plenary session will be included in the program.

• The spare time period before the banquet (Wednesday afternoon) will be organized around recreational activities in small groups, that will enable to address specific topics (researcher life, funding and grants possibilities, research mobilities,…) with senior scientists.