Curriculum Vitae

Education

03/2011 → Ph.D. Degree in 'Engineering of Civil and Mechanical Structural Systems'. University of Trento, Faculty of Engineering, Trento, Italy. Thesis: Structural-model experiments revealing bifurcation, instability and localization. Advisor: Prof. D. Bigoni.

10/2007 → Full-Honors M.Sc. Degree in Civil Engineering. University of Trento, Faculty of Engineering, Trento, Italy. Thesis: Sviluppo di Tecniche di Fotoelasticimetria. Advisor: Prof. D. Bigoni.

Professional experience

12/2019 - present → Associate professor of Solid and Structural Mechanics (ICAR/08 - Scienza delle Costruzioni) at SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy.

12/2016 - 12/2019 → Assistant professor of Solid and Structural Mechanics (ICAR/08 - Scienza delle Costruzioni) at SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy.

11/2012 - 11/2016 → Post Doc at SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy. Host: Prof. A. DeSimone.

05/2011 - 10/2012 → Post Doc at Cambridge University, Department of Engineering, Cambridge, UK. Host: Prof. N.A. Fleck.

11/2007 - 03/2011 → Ph.D. Student at the University of Trento, Faculty of Engineering, Trento, Italy. Host: Prof. D. Bigoni.

Financed research projects

2012 (48 months) → SISSA NOFYSAS 2012 Fellowships. Title of the project: Biomimetic micro-robots. Total funding for the research activity: 40 k€.

2016 (12 months) → Progetti Giovani GNFM 2016. Title of the project: Fracture and instability phenomena in soft active materials. Total funding for the research activity: 4,5 k€.

2022 (24 months) → Programma congiunto PRO3. Title of the project: Swarm intelligence of organism collectives for environmental monitoring, remediation, and sustainable production. Total funding for the research activity: 65 k€.

2023 (24 months) → PRIN 2022 DISCOVER. Title of the project: Unveiling embodied intelligence in natural systems for bioinspired actuator design. Total funding for the research activity: 75 k€.

Scientific interests and research activity

A peculiarity of my research activity is a broad vision of mechanics, such that my way of attacking open problems is typically a combination of experimental observation, mathematical modelling, and numerical simulation. Topics of interest include: biological motility at the micro-scale, structural and material instabilities, fracture mechanics of soft active materials and composites, bio-inspired complex mechanical systems, additive manufacturing.

Editorial activity

Reviewer for the following journals: Acta Biomaterialia, Engineering Failure Analysis, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, Engineering Structures, International Journal of Fracture, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids, Meccanica, Mechanics Research Communications, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Journal of Elasticity, Journal of the European Ceramic Society, Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures, SAGE Open.

Awards

11/2011 → Award for outstanding Ph.D. Thesis, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.

09/2015 → AIMETA Junior Prize in Structural Mechanics, AIMETA2015, Genova, Italy.

Patents

06/2014 → Italian patent n. IT1408351-B (deposited June 7, 2011, published December 8, 2012, patented June 13, 2014). Title: 'Dispositivo strumentato per una caratterizzazione di una struttura interna di un blocco di formaggio'. Inventors: Davide Bigoni, Agostino Cavazza and Giovanni Noselli. Property: Fondazione Edmund Mach, S. Michele all'Adige, Italy.