Alumni Researchers: Anna Pandolfi

I am a professor of computational mechanics in the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale (Civil and Environmental Engineering) at the Politecnico di Milano.

My main field is computational mechanics, with a particular focus on fracture mechanics—the study of how fractures propagate within materials under static or dynamic conditions, regardless of the type of fracture. I am also interested in biological problems, so I study the mechanical behavior of biological tissues such as the eye or the intestines.

We have been working to develop a material consisting of concrete with inclusions capable of absorbing some of the mechanical energy. In this way, part of the vibrational energy can be dissipated from the concrete, which is then no longer as strongly exposed to this energy. This material could then be used, for example, under train tracks or under rotating machinery in oil drilling.

I have known Prof. Weinberg since 2001, when we were working on different topics at Caltech in California and shared the same office. We quickly realized that we had many common professional interests, and that is how our ongoing German-Italian collaboration began.

I was looking for a way to model the behavior of the cornea of the eye. Prof. Weinberg had already worked on a small structure made of assembled triangles. Coincidentally, this 3D model closely resembled the supporting structure of the cornea. So this model could be used in the future to support research on the structure of the cornea. New ideas are always emerging, which may in turn serve as a starting point for further collaboration."

In Italy, we don’t receive any funding for our research. Our research depends on funding from industry. This complicates many things. For example, it’s not easy to build machines in Italy. At the University of Siegen, we have machines that can be used for experiments. In general, there’s a lot of support. If we want to use the laboratory in Italy, there’s a lot of red tape involved, which isn’t the case in Germany.