Alessandro Reali

Short CV

Prof. Alessandro Reali was born in Pavia on February 28th, 1977. After a Laurea degree (equivalent to MSc) summa cum laude in Civil Engineering at the University of Pavia (2001), he got a MSc (2004) and a PhD (2005) in Earthquake Engineering from the University of Pavia and the Institute of Advanced Study of Pavia. After three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow, he became Assistant Professor (2008), then Tenured Associate Professor (2013) and is currently Full Professor (since 2016) of Mechanics of Solids and Structures at the University of Pavia.

Prof. Reali authored more than 90 papers on international journals, including some seminal articles which have recently led to his identification as one of the "ISI Highly Cited Researchers” (in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). He was invited to give seminars at many internationally renowned academic institutions, as well as to give plenary and keynote lectures at relevant international conferences. He received important research awards in the field of Computational Mechanics such as the IACM Fellows Award (2016), the IACM “John Argyris” Award (2014), and the ECCOMAS “O.C. Zienkiewicz” Award (2012), as well as an "ERC Starting Grant" (2010).

He also participated to many research projects (being the coordinator for some of them) funded, among others, by the European Research Council (ERC), the European Science Foundation (ESF), the Italian Government (MIUR), and the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), as well as by companies such as, e.g., Total, Hutchinson, Nokia Corporation, and Saes Getters.

His full CV, along with a complete list of his publications as well as of his seminars and lectures can be found here.

Selected Awards

• 2018, Recipient of the "Bruno Finzi Prize", awarded, on a biennial basis, by Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere to recognize an Italian scholar (45 years old or younger) for outstanding research results concerning Rational Mechanics or other strictly related fields.
• 2017, Appointed Commander (“Commendatore") of the "Order of Merit of the Italian Republic" by the President of the Italian Republic.
• 2017, Included in the 2017 list of "Highly Cited Researchers" by Clarivate/ISI (http://highlycited.com), "in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents, in their specific fields".
• 2014, Recipient of the IACM "John Argyris" Award for Young Scientists, awarded, on a biennial basis, by the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) for outstanding accomplishments by a researcher 40 years old or younger.
• 2014, Included in the list of "Highly Cited Researchers" by ISI Thomson-Reuters (http://highlycited.com).
• 2014, Included in the report "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014", published by Thomson-Reuters to "highlight standout researchers of the last decade".
• 2013, Recipient of the 2013 "AIMETA Junior" Prize for Mechanics of Solids and Structures, awarded, on a biennial basis, by the Italian Association of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (AIMETA) to young (i.e., under 40) Italian scientists for outstanding research results concerning one of the Association scientific areas.
• 2012, Elected member of the "Young Academy of Europe", a pan-European association of outstanding young scientists aiming at "creating a platform for networking, scientific exchange, and science policy", affiliated to the Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe).
• 2012, Recipient of the "O.C. Zienkiewicz" Award, awarded, on a biennial basis, by the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS) to the best young (i.e., under 40) scientist in the field of Computational Engineering Sciences.
• 2010, Recipient of the "Ideas" ERC Starting Grant, considered one of the most prestigious research awards from the European Community. The grant is awarded on a highly competitive basis to the best European scientists and researchers with no more than a 12-year experience after obtaining their PhD, with the specific aim of supporting "pioneering frontier research in any field of science, engineering and scholarship".
• 2004-2012, Recipient (8 times) of the J. Tinsley Oden Faculty Fellowship, awarded by the ICES of the University of Texas at Austin to "support research visits of outstanding researchers and scholars".

Research Interests

• Development and analysis of "isogeometric methods” with applications in several fields of engineering ranging from the mechanics of solids, structures, and fluids to wave propagation and biomechanics problems.

• Development and analysis of constitutive models for advanced materials (e.g., shape memory alloys and ferromagnetic shape memory alloys), both in the small and in the large strain regime.

• Development and analysis of mixed and mixed-enhanced finite elements for compressible, nearly incompressible and incompressible materials, both in the small and in the large strain regime.

• Development and analysis of structural finite elements, both in the small and in the large strain regime.

• Development and analysis of strong-form methods, based on meshless or collocation techniques, taking their basis from classical Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) or from isogeometric approaches.

• Development and analysis of “immersed" or "fictitious domain" methods for fluid-structure interaction applications.

• Development and use of computational methods for the simulation of biomechanical problems, both considering classical finite element techniques as well as innovative isogeometric approaches.

Selected Publications

• Kollmannsberger, S.; Özcan, A.; Baiges, J.; Ruess, M.; Rank, E.; Reali, A.: Parameter-free, weak imposition of Dirichlet boundary conditions and coupling of trimmed and non-conforming patches. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering 101 (9), 2014, 670-699.

• Hughes, Thomas J.R.; Evans, John A.; Reali, Alessandro: Finite element and NURBS approximations of eigenvalue, boundary-value, and initial-value problems. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 272, 2014, 290-320.

• Gomez, Hector; Reali, Alessandro; Sangalli, Giancarlo: Accurate, efficient, and (iso)geometrically flexible collocation methods for phase-field models. Journal of Computational Physics 262, 2014, 153-171.