Full Professor of Structural Mechanics since 2002, he is co-author of 180+ peerreviewed papers on cell motility, the mechanical properties of new materials, of soft and biological matter, pattern formation driven by rough energy landscapes, electromagnetism and phase transformations. He has held research appointments at Carnegie Mellon, Minnesota, Paris XIII, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences-Leipzig, IMA-Minneapolis, Isaac Newton Institute and Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge, ESPCI in Paris (Chaire Joliot-Curie). Plenary
speaker at GAMM2004 (Dresden), 7th Euromech Solid Mechanics Conference (Lisbon, 2009), 8th European Symposium on Martensitic Transformations (Prague, 2009), SIAM Conference on Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science (Philadelphia, 2013), 11th European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (Lisbon, 2018), ICTAM 2020 (Milano), Coupled 2023 (Chania). Recipient of the Keith Medal of Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007, Prix La Recherche in 2010, “Outstanding Paper Award” from the Japanese Liquid Crystal Society in 2011, Humboldt Forschungspreis in 2019, of ERC Advanced Grant (2013) and ERC Proof of Concept Grant (2022). Elected member of Accademia Pontaniana (Naples), of Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere e Arti (Venice and
Euromech Fellow since 2015. Secretary General of CISM, Udine, and member of the editorial board of several international journals.
