Wedding!

On May 3, together with friends I attended the wedding of our good friend and colleague Paolo (now a PhD student in our research group) with Claudia.
The wedding took place in the church of Santa Maria di Lodi, at the Santuario di Vescovio, the ancient Cattedrale dei Sabbini.
http://www.italiavirtualtour.it/dettaglio.php?id=94374
We had a great time, also during the wedding reception that followed.

 

No words can describe the beauty of the church and the whole ceremony, with traditional catholic wedding vows and vocals!



 

 

One of the highlight was the groom "escaping" with the bride on a historic Ural Sidecar!

 



 

A group photo with the married couple, during the wedding reception that followed.

 

Congratulations and warm wishes to the happy couple!

 

 

Advisor(s)

Last Thursday, two of Prof. Bontempi's Master students that I have been co-advising for the last year (Giulia Milana and Sara Ferri), successfully defended their Theses in Civil Engineering. They graduated with full marks ("110 e lode" in the Italian University System), something that translates as "summa cum laude".

Giulia's Thesis was on the sustainability of high-rise buildings. She developed FEM models of a steel diagrid structure, and assessed aspects related to its safety, serviceability and robustness.

Sara's Thesis was on piezoelectric Energy Harvesting. She developed FEM models as well, of a piezoelectric bender, equipped with a flap, which, subjected to air flow, produces energy due to Vortex Shedding excitations.

I am looking forward to preparing some papers with significant results from both!

 

What a day!

What a day!

Today I gave two presentations at a Mini Symposium (that I also chair) at the ASEM13 conference (http://asem.cti3.com/asem13.htm), held at the Jeju Island in South Korea.

I landed in Seoul two days ago, and I am still jet-lagged from the 7 hour time difference with Italy.

Both presentations where on the topic of forensic engineering, a topic on which colleagues from my research group - Prof. Bontempi, Stefania and Chiara - are heavily involved. Both presentations focused on their research.

The presentations were entitled “Alteration of the stability domain of masonry arc structures”, based on the research of my colleague Pierluigi Olmati, and ” Forensic investigation of the collapse of a metal truss structure”, based on the research of my colleague Chiara Crosti.

The next few weeks are going to be very busy and exciting for me!

Athens!

After two weeks in New York and Rome, I am finally back home in Athens. I will be spending a (working) Summer in Greece, having a number of deadlines to meet in the next few weeks (and I am actually pretty much excited about it!).

For the last three days I had the pleasure to host two visitors from Lehigh University (Prof. Clay Naito and his PhD student, Mr. Patrick Trasborg). They are both visiting Italy for a two week period, invited by Prof. Bontempi, and while there, they arranged a small trip to Athens. This gave them the opportunity to visit the National Technical University of Athens, where Prof. Naito gave a seminar on blast loading, after an Invitation from Prof. Charis Gantes. We also had the opportunity to visit three laboratories of the Civil Engineering School (the Metal Structures laboratory, the laboratory of Earthquake Engineering and the Reinforced Concrete laboratory), and have fruitful discussions with Faculty Members. The visit was anticipated by a walk in the archeological area of Athens (Monastiraki and Plaka), where we visited the Acropolis and the New Museum before having dinner with Dr. Vamvatsikos, and was concluded the next day with a dinner offered by Professors Gantes and Zeris. We also had the chance to visit the temple of Poseidon in Sounio and swim in a nearby beach!

Prof. Naito and Patrick are now back in Italy, where they will visit the University of Naples Federico II, and the Milan Polytechnic.

Prof. Clay Naito giving a seminar at the NTUA Metal Structures Laboratory

The NTUA Metal Structures Laboratory

The Temple of Poseidon in Sounio

From our visit at the Acropolis

"Yiasemi", a fantastic spot in the old Athens

Scenari estremi sulle strutture

Today we had three presentations at our department, from Prof. Naito and Mr. Trasborg (Lehigh University) and Dr. Stochino (Cagliari University).

Prof. Naito gave a talk on "Water-Driven Debris Impact Forces on Structures: Experimental and Theoretical Program". Mr. Trasborg on the "Development of a Blast and Ballistic Resistant Insulated Wall Panel". Finally, Dr. Stochino on "Flexural Models of Reinforced Concrete Beams Under Blast Load".

After that, and before heading for dinner, some of us shared some drinks in our favorite meeting place (2periodico) at Rione Monti.

ICOSSAR 2013 Conference in New York

I just came back in Rome from New York, where together with my friends and colleagues Francesco and Stefania, we attended the 11th International Conference on Structural Safety & Reliability (ICOSSAR 2013), held at the Columbia University from June 16 to 20. More information about the conference can be found at www.icossar2013.com
Francesco organized together with Prof. Barbato from the Louisiana State University and Dr. Palmeri from the Loughborough University a Mini Symposium (Performance-Based, Reliability-Based, and Risk-Based Design: Rational approaches to mitigate natural and man-made hazards) with 5 Special Sessions, gathering an impressive number (32) of high quality contributions.
In the above mentioned Mini Symposium, I co-chaired one Session (IV) and presented the papers “Damage and loss evaluation in the performance based wind engineering” and “Blast resistance assessment of a reinforced precast concrete wall under uncertainty”.






At the conference dinner held in Grand Hyatt New York, with Stefania, Donata and Francesco


Columbia Alma Mater statue

COMPDYN 2013 Conference at the island of Kos (Greece)

Together with my colleague and friend Pierluigi Olmati, I attended the 4th International Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering (COMPDYN 2013), held in the Island of Kos in Greece (June 12-14). I gave a presentation focusing on recent developments and uncertainty aspects in the performance based design of structures for wind. More information about the conference can be found in http://www.compdyn2013.org