CompDSSI

Session 1:
"Applications of emerging GPU-accelerated computing at the exascale-exploration of fault-to-structure simulations with regional-scale 3D physics based models"

Short bio:
Dr. McCallen is a Senior Scientist and Program Leader in the Energy Geosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. McCallen’s current research interests focus on high performance earthquake simulations at the nexus between earth science and engineering. Dr. McCallen previously served as Professor and Director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research at the University of Nevada, Reno and has worked in a number of positions related to the U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories at Lawrence Livermore Lab and Lawrence Berkeley Lab. His career started in the Structural and Applied Mechanics Group at Livermore where he developed computational software and performed advanced simulations on complex structures. His responsibilities eventually extended to leadership of major programs including Engineering Division Leader for the National Ignition Facility, and Deputy Principal Associate Director for Global Security. Dr. McCallen has active research program and has served as the Principal Investigator for the DOE EQSIM Exascale Application Development project focused on massively parallel simulations for regional scale earthquake risk assessments.

Session 2:
“Region-Scale Seismic Simulations and Opportunities to Exploit their Output through Machine Learning Techniques”.

Short bio:
Ertugrul Taciroglu earned a B.S. degree in 1993 from Istanbul Technical University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) in 1995, and 1998, respectively. After a stint at the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets (UIUC) as a postdoctoral research associate, he joined the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at UCLA in 2001. His research interests span the disciplines of theoretical & applied mechanics, and structural & geotechnical earthquake engineering. He is currently conducting projects on regional performance based risk assessment of civil infrastructure, structural health and performance monitoring, and soil structure interaction. Dr. Taciroglu is the recipient of a 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER award, and the 2011 Walter Huber Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He was elected to become a Fellow of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) in 2015. He currently serves as an elected member of the EMI Board of Governors. He is the inaugural Chief Editor of the ASCE Open: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Civil Engineering, and serves on the Editorial Boards of several journals including Earthquake Spectra, Soil Dynamics & Earthquake Engineering, and Structural Control & Health Monitoring.

Session 3:
“Mitigation of seismic liquefaction in urban and stratigraphically-variable environments”.

Short bio:
Shideh Dashti is an Associate Professor in Geotechnical Engineering and Geomechanics at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and Associate Chair for Administration in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering. She also directs a college-funded interdisciplinary research theme titled RISE: Resilient Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity. Dr. Dashti obtained her undergraduate degree at Cornell University and graduate degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked briefly with ARUP and Bechtel on several engineering projects in the US and around the world. Her research team at CU studies: the interactions and interdependencies among infrastructure systems during earthquakes and climatic extremes; performance of underground structures ranging from transportation tunnels to water reservoirs and pipelines; consequences and mitigation of the liquefaction hazard; and the intersection of resilience, sustainability, and environmental justice. She is the recipient of the 2018 Arthur Casagrande Award and the 2021 Walter Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from ASCE, among other honors and recognitions.

Session 4:
“Recent trends and gaps in the numerical analysis of offshore foundations under environmental loads”

Short bio:
Federico Pisanò is Manager of Offshore Wind USA at NGI in Boston. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 2011 from Politecnico di Milano and served as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California at Davis (2012) and Politecnico di Milano (2013). In 2014, he assumed the role of Assistant Professor (subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 2021) of Offshore Soil Mechanics at TU Delft in the Netherlands. His technical expertise revolves around developing and applying advanced numerical models to study soil behavior and soil-structure interaction processes, with a particular focus on offshore wind applications in recent years.
Federico has co-authored over 80 publications in journals and conference proceedings. He co-chaired the 4th International Symposium on Cone Penetration Testing and serves as Vice-Chair of the ISSMGE TC209 (Offshore Geotechnics), member of the SUT-US Offshore Site Investigation and Geotechnics (OSIG) committee, and Associate Editor for the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. He received the ISSMGE Bright Spark Lecture Award for emerging academics in 2019 and the ICE David Hislop Award (Offshore Award) in 2022.
Currently, Federico works at the interface between industry and academia, supporting both consulting and R&D activities for the emerging offshore wind market in the USA.

Session 5:
“The role of numerical and constitutive modelling in the seismic design and retrofitting of tunnels”

Short bio:
Daniela Boldini is an Associate Professor in Excavation Engineering and Safety since 2014, previously at the University of Bologna and from 2019 at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2003 she obtained her PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from Sapienza. She conducted research abroad at Vienna University of Technology, Kyoto University, and Stanford University. Currently, she teaches courses on “Tunnelling and Excavation Engineering”, “Excavation Engineering and Safety” and “Seismic Hazard and Land Protection” at Sapienza, and “Underground Constructions” at the University of Bologna. Her research interests focus on constitutive and numerical modelling of geomaterials, soil-structure interaction problems in static and dynamic conditions, and the behaviour of shallow and deep tunnels. She has co-authored over 200 scientific publications and supervised numerous Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. theses. She is a nominated member of the ISSMGE Technical Committee 204 on “Underground Construction in Soft Ground” and serves as an Associate Editor for the “Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering” and “Underground Constructions” journals. Additionally, she is a member of the editorial boards of various journals, including “Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology” and “Computers and Geotechnics”. She has been the principal investigator for research contracts and consultant activities related to underground constructions.

Short bio:
Davide Noè Gorini is a postdoctoral researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. He graduated in Civil Engineering in 2015 at Sapienza University of Rome, where also obtained a doctorate in Structural and Geotechnical Engineering in 2019. He is currently involved in research activities within the international community and privileges open-source numerical environments for sharing knowledge without barriers, such as OpenSees and open supercomputing resources. His primary reseach fields concern: Thermodynamic Inertial Macroelement approach for simulating frequency- & amplitude-dependant soil-structure interaction in the large-scale assessment of structures; dynamic performance of bridges, buildings, tunnels and offshore structures; dissipative foundations and protection solutions for infrastructures against earthquake and wind loading; artificial intelligence methodologies for optimising the dynamic performance of soil-structure systems; computational tools for soil structure interaction problems in OpenSees; thermodynamic-based constitutive models for geo-materials; multi-hazard assessment of natural slopes.

Short bio:
Domenico is a design engineer at ARUP (London), specialised in performing advanced numerical modeling of soil-structure interaction problems. He boasts a broad experience with codes like LS-DYNA, OpenSees, and FLAC. He completed his Ph.D. at Sapienza University of Rome in 2022, following his Master’s degree in 2018.
His expertise focuses on developing simplified procedures for the seismic design of different system typologies, such as retaining walls, bridges with integral abutments, and monopile-supported offshore wind turbines. Domenico is actively involved in R&D projects with several publications in technical journals and conferences.
Throughout his career, he was involved in the static and seismic assessment of a wide range of systems, including dams, retaining structures, piled foundations of long-span bridges, shallow foundations of ancient residential buildings, as well as monopile and suction caisson foundations of offshore structures.