Biographical Sketch

 

I am a faculty member of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Northwestern University that I joined in August 2011. Prior to joining Northwestern, I worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for 6 years. I obtained my Laurea and my PhD degree in structural engineering from Politecnico Di Milano (Italy). My  teaching experience covers several  courses in structural mechanics and mechanics of materials typically offered in civil engineering curricula.  My research expertise is relevant to experimental, computational and applied mechanics, with emphasis on heterogeneous and quasi-brittle infrastructure materials.

 

My work on constitutive modeling of concrete through the adoption of the so-called Lattice Discrete Particle Model (LDPM), one of the most accurate and reliable approaches to simulate failure of materials experiencing strain-softening, is known worldwide. In addition, recent work on waterless concrete for Martian constructions has received widespread attention in the technical community and in the media. Under the sponsorship of several agencies, my current research focuses on formulating and validating multiscale and multiphysics computational frameworks for the simulation of large-scale problems dealing with a variety of different applications including, but not limited to, infrastructure aging and deterioration, structural resiliency, and response of materials and structures to natural and man-made hazards.  
 

I am a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and I am active in several technical committees. I held leadership positions at Northwestern University (MMS Program coordinator and Director of Graduate Studies), ASCE EMI (Board of Directors),  ACI 446 (Chair), ACI 209 (Chair), IA-ConCreep (President), and IA-FraMCoS (Treasurer). In 2018 I was awarded the EMI Fellow membership grade and in 2025 was elected Fellow for ACI. 
 

In 2020 I founded Cusatis Computational Services (CCS) Inc to pursue translation of fundamental research into practice. %CCS recently obtained a Phase II STTR project and a Phase II SBIR project from the Department of Defense.
 

From 2021 to 2024, I was on leave from my teaching and service responsibilities at Northwestern University to serve as Program Director for the CMMI ECI program at the National Science Foundation. I also served as CMMI ECI Expert from March 2024 to February 2025.