The papers in this proceeding are a collection of the works presented at the IUTAM symposium-Marrakech 2002 (October 20-25) which brought together scientists from various countries. These papers cover contemporary topics in multiscale modeling and characterization of materials behavior of engineering materials. They were selected to focus on topics related to deformation and failure in metals, alloys, intermetallics and polymers including: experimental techniques, deformation and failure mechanisms, dislocation-based modelling, microscopic-macroscopic averaging schemes, application to forming...