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" degree and my PhD degree in structural engineering from Politecnico Di Milano (Italy). I teach courses of the civil engineering curriculum and perform research in the field of 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 member of ASCE and ACI and active in several technical committees. I held leadership positions in ASCE EMI, ACI 446, ACI 209, IA-ConCreep, and IA-FRAMCOS. In 2018 I was awarded the prestigious EMI Fellow membership grade. From September 2021 to February 2024, I have served as Program Director for the CMMI ECI program at the National Science Foundation.