Antonio DeSimone

Scuola Internazionale di Studi Avanzati | Italy

Short Biography

Born in Naples, where he studied until 1987, obtaining a Laurea in Civil Engineering  at Università di Napoli Federico II PhD in Mechanics, University of Minnesota, 1992 Assistant Professor at Università di Roma Tor Vergata (1992-1998). Leader of an independent junior research group on Multiscale Phenomena in Mechanics, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig (1998-2002). Full professor of Mechanics of Solids and Structures (Scienza delle Costruzioni) at SISSA (Trieste) since 2002.

Research Interests: 

His research interests concern biological and bio-inspired motility, the mechanical properties of new materials and of soft matter, pattern formation driven by rough energy landscapes and phase transformations, and the interaction between mechanics and electro-magnetism. He is author of more than 120 peer-reviewed papers on these subjects.

Awards and Honors:

Keith Medal 2007 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh;

`Prix La Recherche’ 2010; 

Outstanding Paper Award from the Japanese Liquid Crystal Society 2011;

Socio corrispondente della Accademia Pontaniana di Napoli;

Visiting Fellow in 2013 at the Newton Institute, University of Cambridge;

Life member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge;

Euromech Fellow (Solid Mechanics) since 2015;

Visiting Fellow 2017-18 at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge;

ERC Advanced Grant MicroMotility (2014-2019)

Founder and Director of the applied mathematics lab "SISSA MathLab" (since 2010)

Founder and co-Director of the Sissa laboratory SAMBA (Sensing and Moving Bio-inspired Artifacts) (since 2013)