Dr Alice Cicirello
Dr Alice Cicirello
Principal investigator
Principal investigator
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Dr Alice Cicirello is the founder and the Head of the Data, Vibration and Uncertainty Group (2017), and currently holds the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2023) .
From September 2023 Alice re-joined the University of Cambridge as a University Assistant Professor in Applied Mechanics in the Engineering Department (part of the Dynamics and Vibration Research Group), and as a Lecturer and Fellow in Engineering at Churchill College.
Alice was an Associate Professor and the Head of the Section of Mechanics and Physics of Structures at TU Delft (2020-2023). Alice was a Departmental Lecturer in Dynamics and Vibration at the Oxford Engineering Science Department (Solid Mechanics & Materials Engineering Group) and a Career Development Fellow in Engineering Science at Balliol College (2017-2019). She founded (2017) and led (2017-2021) the Dynamics, Vibration and Uncertainty (DVU) Laboratory in the Oxford Engineering Science Department.
Prior to these academic positions, she worked in industry as a Senior Research Scientist at Schlumberger (2014-2017). She was a Research Associate (2012-2014) and a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher (2009-2012) at the Cambridge University Engineering Department. Alice obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2013, and her BEng (2007) and MSc (2009) from the University of Messina (Italy).
Her research is focused on three Engineering overarching grand-challenges: (i) Design under uncertainty and nonlinearity; (ii) Monitoring and modelling complex systems for remaining useful life assessment under uncertainty, nonlinearity and sparse noisy data; (iii) Development of explainable and interpretable machine learning strategies for engineering applications. Alice enjoys exploring exciting new techniques based on physics-enhancing machine learning, machine learning applied to measurements and text, uncertainty quantification, dynamic testing, monitoring of components/systems/structures and materials, and advanced physics-based models of non-linear systems… including those of spiders! She has experience working on research challenges related to energy, automotive, aerospace and civil engineering.
Alice has held visiting positions at several research institutions, including MIT, University of Oxford, Sandia National Laboratories, the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Auckland. Alice was Honorary Lecturer at the University of Liverpool and an IAS Open Programme Fellow at Institute of Advanced Studies (Loughborough University).
Alice gave keynotes lectures at the Latest Developments in Physics-Informed Machine Learning Workshop (AIUK2024), at the European Nonlinear Dynamics Conference (ENOC 2024), at the Sixth Structural Dynamics Workshop, opening the Physics-Informed Machine Learning themed-day, at the University of Sheffield (12/24), at the Akustikkens Dag 2025 in Copenhagen (03/25), and at the 9th edition of the Workshop on Nonlinear System Identification Benchmarks in May 2025,
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Alice will give keynote lectures at the:
2025 Tribomechadynamics Conference that will be held in August, 2025, in Stuttgart Germany
54th International Congress & Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, INTERNOISE 2025, August 2025, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Colloquium 657 – Recent Advances in Non-Smooth Dynamics (NSD2025) that will be held in Exeter in December 2025.
Alice has organized and chaired technical sessions at international conferences, technical workshops and online seminar series. Alice was part of the organizing committee of RASD 2024, EURODYN 23, and MPSVA 2022. Alice was a member of the scientific committee of several conferences (including EWSHM 2024, ISMA2022-USD2022, 2024, UNCECOMP 21 and 23, and PASC 23). Alice organized and chaired the Physics-Enhancing Machine Learning Workshop at the Institute of Physics in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and the Data-Centric Engineering @ CAM event at the Cambridge University Engineering Department in 2025.
Alice is currently:
Executive Board member of the European Association of Structural Dynamics (EASD) - 2023-present.
Part of the Core Team in the Centre for Climate Repair
Part of the Centre of Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC)
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Experienced Research Fellow (2023- present).
Advanced Visiting Fellow at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield (2022 - present).
Editorial Board member for:
ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering,
ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering
Member of the Scientific committee of:
12th European Workshop on SHM – EWSHM 2026, July 7-10, 2026, Toulouse, France
13th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, 27th September - 1st October 2026, Hannover, Germany, EURODYN 2026
the 6th International Conference on Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Science and Engineering, UNCECOMP 2025
Alice is also very passionate about teaching, and she was awarded the Bronze for Excellence in Teaching for the academic year 2018/19 at the Oxford Engineering Science Department.
Alice has been recently invited as:
Keynote speaker at the 9th edition of the Workshop on Nonlinear System Identification Benchmarks in May 2025, Slides are available here.
Keynote speaker at the The 6th Sheffield Workshop on Structural Dynamics - December 2024. Slides available here
Keynote speaker at the European Nonlinear Dynamics Conference (ENOC 2024) - July 2024. Slides available here
Invited speaker for the Lectures series organized by Cambridge Society of Applied Research, “Physics IS enhancing Machine Learning – moving away from accurate-but-wrong predictions for bridges, wind turbines.. and the climate”, 27th May 2024. Alice's slides.
Keynote speaker at the Workshop: Latest Developments in Physics-Informed Machine Learning (18/03/24) - fringe event as part of AIUK2024 . Alice's slides.
Panelist on "What roles can AI play in the future of design?" at the IABSE Future of Design event, London, 21 September 2023. Alice's slides
Presenter during the LiveQuay Modelling workshop (3/10/23) on Physics-Informed Machine Learning models for quay walls and bridges. Alice's slides can be found here
Some recent recorded talks available on YouTube:
27/02/24 seminars hosted by the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring at ETH Zurich - A physics-enhanced machine learning perspective to SHM. Alice's slides
22/09/2023 DDPS online seminar - Challenges and opportunities for integrating physics-knowledge in machine learning strategies
13/01/2023 - Society for Imprecise Probability: Theory and Applications (SIPTA) seminar series- Engineering and IP: what's going on? - in tandem with E. Patelli and M. Faes. FULL SLIDES DECK
21/09/2022 - Institute of Advanced Study (Loughborough) seminars - Investigating friction in structural dynamics: from fundamentals to physics-informed machine learning
(some) Awards, Fellowships and Visiting Positions
2023, Fellow in Engineering, Churchill College, University of Cambridge
2022, Visiting Scholar in the Turing Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins – infrastructure theme (2023), The Alan Turing Institute, UK.
2022, Visiting Fellowship (2023), Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.
2022, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers – 9 months over 3 years to collaborate with Michael Beer (Leibniz Universität Hannover) and Matthias Faes (TU Dortmund) in Germany.
More info at:
Chair for Reliability Engineering @ TU Dortmund
Institute for Risk and Reliability @ Leibniz Universität Hannover2022, IAS Open Programme Fellowship 2022-23, Institute of Advanced Studies, Loughborough University.
2021, Advanced Visiting Fellowship (09/22-09/26), Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield.
2020, Visiting Fellowship (2020-2022), Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.
2019, Excellence in Teaching Award 2019 at the Engineering Science Department, Oxford. Awarded “Bronze” for excellence in teaching for the academic year 2018/19. Oxford, July 2019.
2018, Visiting Academic (2019-20), Department of Mechanical Eng., University of Auckland.
2017, Honorary Lecturer (2017-2022), Institute for Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool.
2017, Visiting Researcher (2018, 1 month) at AeroAstro group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2017, Visiting Researcher (2017, <1 month) at the Optimization and Uncertainty Quantification Department, Sandia National Laboratories.
2016, Career Development Fellowship (4-year funding, 01/17-12/20) at Balliol College, University of Oxford. 4-year Research Fellowship with teaching and admin duties.
2014, Official Visiting Researcher (2014-2017), Engineering Department, University of Cambridge.
2014, Young Researcher Best Paper Award at the 12th International Conference on Computational Structures Technology, Naples, Italy.
2012, Bye Fellow in Engineering - Fellowship (yearly appointment renewed until 2017) at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.
2009, Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher - Fellowship (3-year funding, 10/09-09/12) at the Engineering Department, University of Cambridge.
The description on my career is filtered. It is connecting the “dots” looking backwards, without mentioning the feeling of uncertainty going forward not knowing which “dot” would come next.
It is leaving out: the numbers of times I was not even shortlisted for a position; the number of my papers that got rejected or harshly judged; the number of grants that I spent months writing that didn’t go through even the first selection stage; the number of days and months in which my codes, my mathematical formulations and my experiments were not working and not making any sense; the number of times I felt nervous before giving a talk (and still do!) because I might say something stupid; the million times in which things didn’t go as planned; the number of times I was disappointed to hear something against my values during a meeting and preferred to not speaking up; the number of times I was disappointed in myself for letting my biases and fears getting the best of me; the number of times I considered quitting academia.
Most importantly is leaving out the feeling that each comment, post, short note, paper, grant that I am about to submit is probably stupid and nonsense.
Every dot is the result of hard work, luck, being at the right place at the right time, and being surrounded by people who feel like sunshine. Every dot is there because I keep trying to learn and move forward from the spectacular number of mistakes, failures, disappointments, and setbacks that are on my way. Some days is much harder than others. Each dot is there thanks to the people around me that continuously help me navigate what is happening behind the filter.
A
February 2023
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