D-BAUG Spotlight Seminar Series

The future of mobility: the quest for smart and sustainable transportation systems

Dr. Maria Laura Delle Monache

Assistant professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

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Maria Laura Delle Monache is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was a research scientist at Inria in Grenoble, France (2016-2021) and a Postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University - Camden in USA (2014-2016). She received the B.Sc. degree from the university of L’Aquila (Italy), a joint M.Sc. degree from the University of L’Aquila (Italy) and the University of Hamburg (Germany), and the Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France in 2009, 2011, and 2014, respectively. She is a member of the Standing Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics of the Transportation Research Board and a member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Smart Cities. She was awarded the 2023 IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical System Mid-Career Award. Dr. Delle Monache’s research is focused on modeling and control for cyber-physical transportation systems. Her work is at the intersection of mathematics, control theory and transportation.

Seismic and blast loading on underground structures

Dr. Stavroula Kontoe

Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Patras Greece

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Stavroula Kontoe is Associate Professor at the external pageUniversity of Patrascall_made and Visiting Reader at external pageImperial College Londoncall_made. She holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2001), an MSc in Soil Mechanics and Engineering Seismology (2002) and a PhD in Computational Geomechanics (2006) from Imperial College London. Following the completion of her studies she worked as a Lecturer (2006-2014), Senior Lecturer (2014-2019) and Reader in Soil Dynamics (2019-2022) at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College London. Her publication record includes more than 130 papers in topics related to geotechnical earthquake engineering, computational geomechanics and offshore geotechnics. She has been active as specialist consultant and as member of several International and National Committees (TC203 of ISSMGE, EEAE, IAEE), while she served as Chair of the UK Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics (SECED) for the period 2020-2022. She is currently Editor for Computers and Geotechnics and serves at editorial boards of other journals (SDEE, JEE).  

Drought in the Anthropocene

Dr. Anne van Loon

Associate Professor in Drought Risk, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, the Netherlands

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Anne Van Loon is a hydrologist and interdisciplinary drought risk scientist, interested in the relationship between water, people and the environment. Anne currently leads the interdisciplinary ERC project on drought-to-flood disasters (PerfectSTORM) and is involved in projects related to drought & flood management in southern Africa (Connect4WR), drought risk modelling in eastern Africa (DOWN2EARTH), optimising climate services for drought adaptation (I-CISK), and upscaling water storage in the Netherlands (UPWAS). Before starting at VU Amsterdam, Anne was a (Senior) Lecturer in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham (UK). She did a PhD and postdoc at Wageningen University on drought propagation and impacts, and worked at FutureWater on water management modelling.

Wood in rivers: hazards and benefits

Dr. Isabella Schalko

Junior Group Leader (SNSF Ambizione Fellow), Institute of Fluid Dynamics, ETH Zurich

Research Affiliate, Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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Isabella Schalko received her PhD in 2018 from the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) at ETH Zurich and was awarded the ETH Medal for her doctoral thesis. After completing her PhD, Isabella was awarded an SNSF Early Postoc Mobility Fellowship to work as a Postdoc at the Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at MIT. Prior to her SNSF Ambizione Fellowship, she worked as a Lecturer and Senior Research Assistant at VAW, ETH Zurich.

Isabella is a hydraulic engineer with expertise in environmental fluid mechanics. Her research aims to create a fundamental understanding of transport processes in fluvial systems to make a positive impact on the environment. She integrates physical modeling and field observations to study the interaction between flow and (in)organic matter in fluvial systems. The goal is to develop models of the physical processes to improve the management of natural resources and the design of hydraulic structures.