Alessio Ferrari

Dr. Alessio Ferrari is Research Associate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) where he is lab chief expert in experimental geomechanics, and Associate Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy). He earned an MSc in Environmental Engineering and a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering. He was appointed as a Marie-Curie post-doctoral fellow at the EPFL and at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC, Spain). He re-joined the Laboratory of Soil Mechanics at the EPFL in 2009. His current main research interests are in geomechanics for geo-energy systems, experimental and constitutive analysis of the thermo-hydro-chemo-mechanical behaviour of complex geomaterials, development of advanced testing facilities for multiphysical testing of soils and shales, pore scale testing, and natural hazard assessment. He has successfully supervised three PhD theses at the EPFL and he is currently supervising six PhD students.  He has been active in the organization of scientific events at the international level, in particular in the field of geotechnics for energy-related applications. His scientific production includes 26 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals, 6 book chapters and 2 books edited for the Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. He is acting as member of the editorial board for the Elsevier journal Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment and he is reviewer for the main scientific journals in the fields of geomechanics and geotechnical engineering. He has been active in attracting research funding from both the public and industrial sectors (more than 1.5 MCHF in the last 4 years). He has been acting as principal investigator in EC and national (Swiss) research projects. He is currently lecturer of the courses in “Slope Stability” and “Experimental Geomechanics” at the EPFL, and “Geotechnical Engineering” at the Università degli Studi di Palermo.