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Valerio Cozzani

Full Professor

Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering

Academic discipline: ING-IND/25 Chemical Plants

Curriculum vitae

Academic Qualifications:

  • Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy, 1997.
  • B.Sc.+M.Sc. (Laurea Quinquennale) in Chemical Engineering, University of Pisa (Italy), 1992, cum laude (Honors).

Academic Experience:

  • October 2006 - present: Professor at the School of Engineering and member of the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna.
  • October 2002 - September 2006: Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering and member of the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Bologna.
  • November 1998 - September 2002: Lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering and member of the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Pisa.
  • January 1997 - November 1998: Research Assistant (Tecnologo) at the National Research Group on Chemical and Environmental Risk of the Italian National Research Board (CNR).

Teaching

Overview of Teaching Experience

Valerio Cozzani has a wide experience in teaching, development of courses and design of academic and professional programs. He carried out several graduate and undergraduate teaching activities in B.Sc. and M.Sc. Programs in Chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Safety Engineering and Energy Engineering at the Universities of Pisa and Bologna (Italy). He also taught in several foreign institutions (Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics – Belgium, INSA Rouen - France, NTNU Trondheim – Norway, South China University of Technology, etc.). At University of Bologna he was in charge of designing both Academic Programmes and professional courses for practitioners.

Experience in Programme management at University of Bologna

  • Coordinator of the committee supervising the Academic Programs offered by the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering (2015 - 2021)
  • Director of the M.Sc. Programme in Offshore Engineering (2018 - 2021)
  • Director of the Graduate and Undergraduate Programs in Chemical Engineering (2012 - 2018)
  • Director of the Ph.D. Program in Engineering and Information Technology for Structural and Environmental Monitoring and Risk Management (2019)
  • Design of the M.Sc. Programme in Offshore Engineering (2018)
  • Design and management of summer schools in “Offshore and Marine System Engineering” (2015) and “Decommissioning of Offshore Oil&Gas Installations: opportunities for Blue Growth” (2018)
  • Design and management of 2 editions of a Professional Master Program on Safety and Environmental Protection in the Oil&Gas Industry (2011 – 2013)
  • Design and management of 14 editions of a professional course on Industrial Safety for HSE personnel (2009 – 2023)

More relevant graduate and undergraduate teaching activities

  • Developed and taught Unit Operations (B.Sc. Chemical Engineering), Chemical Engineering Equipment Design (M.Sc. Chemical Engineering), Process Safety Engineering (M.Sc. Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering) at the University of Bologna.
  • Developed and taught Process Safety Engineering (M.Sc. Chemical Engineering) at Universities of Bologna and Pisa, and Risk Analysis (M.Sc. Safety Engineering) at the University of Pisa

Teaching activities in professional courses and in Ph.D. courses

Invited lectures on Loss Prevention and Risk Assessment within Ph.D. and post-graduate courses at Von Karman Institute of Fluid Dynamics, Texas A&M University, INSA Rouen, TU Delft, University of Stuttgart, Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari “S. Anna”, University of Naples "Federico II", Polytechnic University of Milan, University of Padua, etc.

Research

Research interests

Prof. Cozzani has several years of research experience in the fields of safety and sustainability of industrial processes, loss prevention and innovative environmental technologies. The specific topics of his research activity are the development and optimization of sustainable processes for energy production, the study of integrated processes for energy and material recovery from wastes, safety in scale-up of biotechnological processes, and the development of innovative methodologies and models for hazard and risk analysis. In the latter field, prof. Cozzani developed a specific experience in models for equipment damage and in the implementation of procedures for the quantitative assessment of accidental scenarios triggered by external hazard factors. With respect to sustainability and new technologies, his research interests focus on the quantitative assessment of sustainability performance of alternative processes and on the analysis of energy transition scenarios based on P2G and P2L technologies.

The scientific activity is documented by 250+ peer-reviewed publications (citation indexes, January 2024: H-index 62, 12000+ citations).

Management of Research Projects

Prof. Cozzani was the Principal Investigator (PI) of several national and international research projects, both funded by public organizations (European Commission, Italian Ministry of Education, Italian National Civil Protection, Regional Environmental Protection Agencies, etc.) and private companies (Shell, Eni, Lyondellbasell, etc.). Some of the more significant project are listed below:

  • European Commission, 7FP, 2008: “iNTeg-Risk: Early Recognition, Monitoring and Integrated Management of Emerging, New Technology Related Risks”. Sub-Project Director, Member of Executive Board, PI at UniBO.
  • European Commission, Joint Research Centre, IPSC, contract 254410, 2012: “Description of accident scenarios, failure frequencies, risk assessment data and separation distances for Land-Use Planning evaluations around Seveso plants”. PI.
  • European Commission, 7FP, 2013: “EDEN: End-user driven DEmo for cbrNe”. PI at UniBO.
  • European Commission, DG ECHO, 2018: “WUIVIEW: Wildland-Urban Interface VIrtual Essays Workbench”. PI at UniBO
  • European Commission, Horizon Europe, 2024, “COREu: CO2 routes across Europe”. PI at UniBO
  • ERA-NET SAF€RA, 2015: “SAPHEDRA – Building a European Platform for evaluation of consequence models dedicated to emerging risks”. PI at UniBO
  • MIUR, PRIN 2007: “Development of Key Performance Indicators for the introduction of Safety and Sustainability Drivers in Process Design”. PI.
  • MIUR, PRIN 2017: “Assessment of Cascading Events triggered by the Interaction of Natural Hazards and Technological Scenarios involving the release of Hazardous Substances”. PI.
  • Shell Research, 2004: “FREE: Fragmentation of Equipment Evaluation and assessment”. PI.
  • Herambiente, 2017: “Continuous improvement of the sustainability of dry acid gas removal processes in WtE facilities”. PI.
  • Regional Environmental Agency - Emilia-Romagna, 2017: Performance assessment of a facility for sanitary wastes incineration. PI.
  • Versalis, 2020: “Methodology for the integration of Natech scenarios in safety reports”. PI.

Short Mobilities

  • Industrial Hazards Unit - Institute for Safety, Informatics and Systems, European Commission Joint Research (1995-1996)
  • Technical University of Graz - AMVT, Graz, Austria (1999)
  • Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada (2012)
  • INSA - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Rouen, Rouen, Francia (2015)
  • Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center – Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA (2015)
  • TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands (2018)
  • Texas A&M University – Department of Chemical Engineering, College Station, Texas, USA (2018)
  • China University of Mining & Technology – School of Emergency Management and Safety Engineering, Beijing, China (2019)
  • NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway (2020)
  • South China University of Technology, Guangzhoum China (2023)

Mentoring and assessment activities in Ph.D. Programs

Member of the board of advisors of the Ph.D. Programs in:

  • Chemical Engineering (University of Pisa, 2000-2008)
  • Nuclear and Industrial Safety (University of Pisa, 2000-2010)
  • Chemical, Environmental and Safety Engineering (University of Bologna, 2003-2012)
  • Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering (University of Bologna, 2013-2016)
  • Engineering and Information Technology for Structural and Environmental Monitoring and Risk Management (University of Bologna, 2017-)

Member of thesis defence committees in several Italian and foreign universities (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Norwegian University of Technology, TU Delft, INSA Rouen, Universitè de Paris-Est, Memorial University of Newfoundland – Canada, Pondicherry University – India, IIT Bombay – India, University of Pretoria – South Africa, etc.)

Advisor of 33 Ph.D. students.

Awards

  • Included in the list of “world top 2% most cited scientists” by Stanford University
  • Trevor Kletz award from Texas A&M University for merit in research and education in process safety (2015)
  • Invited to deliver a spotlight talk, European Federation of Chemical Engineering (2020)
  • Invited to deliver a keynote lecture at International Symposium of Loss Prevention, Prague, 2022

Commitments of Trust

Nominations in international and national committees

  • Member of the National Committed for the Protection and Prevention of Major Hazards of Italian National Civil Protection, since 2023
  • Chair of the Energy Section, European Federation of Chemical Engineering, since 2022
  • Italian Delegate at the Working Party on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE), since 2014
  • Chair of the European Safety and Reliability Association Technical Committee on Chemical and Process Industry, since 2015
  • Member of the executive board of the European Platform on Industrial Safety (ETPIS), 2008-2016
  • Appointed as Expert for the Technical Assistance and Information Exchange Bureau (TAIEX), DG Enlargement, European Commission (2008).
  • Member of the advisory panel of the FP7 ERA-net “SAFERA - Coordination of European Research on Industrial Safety towards Smart and Sustainable Growth” (2012-2015)
  • Councillor of the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering (AIDIC)
  • Coordinator of the Italian working party on safety in the chemical and process industry (CISAP) of AIDIC

    Activity in Editorial Boards

  • Associate Editor of “Safety Science” (Elsevier).
  • Member of the Editorial Board di Elsevier for publications on Chemical Engineering.
  • Member of the Editorial Board of the “Journal of Hazardous Materials” (Elsevier).
  • Member of the Editorial Board of the “Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industry” (Elsevier).
  • Guest Editor of special issues for Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industry, Safety Science
  • Member of the scientific committees of ESREL conferences (since 2008)
  • Member of the scientific committees of PSAM conferences (2008, 2010, 2012, 2020)
  • Member of the scientific committees of ICheAP conferences (since 2009)
  • Scientific Chairman of CISAP conference since 2012

Appointment as panel member or external assessor of research projects

Appointed panel member for the assessment of research projects:

  • Norwegian Research Council – Norway (2017-2023)
  • Foundation for Science and Technology – Portugal (2020-2022)
  • Italian Ministry for University and Scientific Research – FISR2019

Appointed as external expert for the assessment of research projects by the following organizations: TWAS – UNESCO, Novo Nordisk Foundation (Denmark), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (US), Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, Slovak Research and Development Agency, Greek Ministry of Education, Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation (Georgia), Romanian National Council for Development and Innovation, Italian Ministry for University and Scientific Research (PRIN program).

Appointment as assessor of educational programs

  • UPM - University Putra Malaysia: assessment of the M.Sc. Program in Process Safety and Loss Prevention (2019, 2021)
  • Cyprus Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education: assessment of the M.Sc. Program in Occupational Safety and Health and of the Ph.D. Program in Occupational Safety and Health (2020)
  • KAUST – King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia: assessment of the M.Sc. and Ph.D. programs in Chemical Engineering (2023)

Appointment as assessor for academic promotions

Appointed as assessor for the promotion of academic staff by the following universities:

  • IIT Bombay (India)
  • Macquarie University (Australia)
  • Singapore Institute of Technology (Singapore)
  • Universitè Jean Monnet (France)
  • University of Aberdeen (UK)
  • University of Qatar (Qatar)
  • UPC – Polytechnic University of Catalunya (Spain)
  • UPM – University Putra Malaysia (Malaysia)

Appointed member of the Italian National Committee for Scientific Qualification of applicants to Professorships, for topic SC 09/D3 (Chemical Engineering Plant and Process Design) in years 2012 and 2013, and for topic SC 09/D2 (Systems, Methods and Technologies for Chemical Engineering) in year 2021.

Service (at University of Bologna)

  • Director of the Joint Laboratory established by Eni and University of Bologna on Hydrogen and Carbon use through Energy from Renewables (HC-hub-ER)
  • Member of the Committee for the internationalization of curricula, Faculty of Engineering (2006-2012)
  • Coordinator (2016-2021) and member (2021-) of the University Thematic Group on Safety and Security

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