Associate Professor at the University of Bologna since 2025, he conducts research and teaching in mechanical design and advanced composite materials.
Main research interests
- Nanostructured and multifunctional composite materials for impact detection and structural health monitoring. Specifically, the development of self-sensing laminates incorporating piezoelectric nanofibrous mats and smart coatings containing mechanoluminochromic crystals.
- Development and design of composite components. Specifically, numerical modelling, structural optimisation and experimental validation of variable-stiffness carbon-fibre prosthetic feet, as well as glass-fibre battery enclosures and innovative suspension systems for sustainable mobility.
- Mechanical characterisation and structural analysis. Specifically, the static, fatigue and impact behaviour of materials and joints, fracture mechanics, and static and kineto-elastodynamic finite element analyses.
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Education
He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2012 and obtained his PhD in 2016 at the Department of Industrial Engineering, with a thesis on toughening and self-healing of composite laminates through nanofibrous mat interleaving.
Academic career
After several years as a research fellow before and after his PhD, he joined the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Bologna as a Junior Fixed-Term Researcher in 2019 and became a Senior Fixed-Term Researcher in 2021.
Teaching
Since 2017, he has taught on bachelor’s, master’s and postgraduate professional programmes at the University of Bologna in mechanical design and composite materials.
He currently teaches the following courses:
- Composite Materials Laboratory, within the Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering.
- Composite Materials Design Laboratory, within the Professional Bachelor’s Degree in Polymeric Composites.
- Design with Composite Materials – Module 2, within the postgraduate professional Master’s programme in Composite Materials in Faenza (MaCoF).
He has also taught the Introduction to the Finite Element Method module within the Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Forlì Campus and the Laboratory of Automatic Machines course within the Bachelor’s Degree in Automation Engineering.
Since 2022, he has served as an academic advisor for the structural design of composite chassis and components for the University of Bologna’s Formula SAE and MotoStudent projects.
Research activities
Since 2020, he has coordinated the research group on the design and development of advanced nanostructured composite materials within the University of Bologna’s Electrospinning and Nanotechnology Laboratory.
He has participated in regional, national and European research projects. He served as Principal Investigator of the regional POR-FESR i-LBBox project and as local unit coordinator for the POR-FESR GREENBUS project. He secured funding for the national PRIN 2022 SELF-RE-PREG project and participated in the European H2020 MyLeg and H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie A_MADAM projects. He has also coordinated several industrial research and consultancy projects.
He collaborates with research groups at the University of Parma and the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), with the Empa (Switzerland) and Fraunhofer ENAS (Germany) research centres, and with Össur (Iceland). He has supervised three PhD students and co-supervised one PhD student, alongside numerous theses and internships.
He is the author of 92 publications, including 40 in Q1 journals and 27 in journals ranked in the top decile (top 10%). His h-index is 24 (figures updated in September 2026).
He is a co-inventor of two international patents concerning a variable-stiffness prosthetic foot (WO2023135510A1) and a cell tray for electrochemical cell formation (WO2025262592A1), respectively, as well as a mechanoluminochromic coating for impact detection on composite laminates.
Institutional activities and academic appointments
He has been a council member of the Interdepartmental Centre for Industrial Research in Advanced Mechanics and Materials (CIRI-MAM) since 2019 and of the “Ercole De Castro” Research Centre on Electronic Systems (ARCES) since 2022. Since 2025, he has been affiliated with the National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology (INSTM).
From 2020 to 2023, he served on the committee assessing applications for transfer to the University of Bologna’s Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Mechanical Engineering.
Membership of scientific and editorial committees
In 2023–2024, he served as Guest Editor of the Special Issue “Functionalization of Composite Materials by Polymeric Nanofibers” in the journal Polymers.
Since 2025, he has been Co-Chair of the organising committee of ICEM 21, the International Conference on Experimental Mechanics.
Other activities
He is a co-founder and shareholder of LiBER s.r.l., a University of Bologna spin-off established in 2022 and dedicated to developing modular battery packs for electric mobility.
