Ms Francesca Marafini 

Francesca is a PhD Student at the International Doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering (INDICEE) at the University of Florence, working on long-term Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of historic and monumental structures. Her research is co-supervised by prof. Michele Betti and prof. Gianni Bartoli, and Ph.D. Alberto Barontini and Ph.D. Nuno Mendes from University of Minho in Portugal. She joined the DVU group in October 2022 as an affiliated member, and she was a visiting PhD student at TU Delft from May to July 2023.  Within the DVU group, she will look into the exploitation and further development of physics-informed Machine Learning approaches for SHM.

Francesca completed and was conferred a double title BSc. and MSc. (w. Honors) in Building Engineering and Architecture at Sapienza University in Rome, in 2017. In 2019, she was awarded two research scholarship, one from Sapienza University and one from the SAHC Consortium, to attend the Advanced Master in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC). She completed the Advanced MSc. in 2020 and awarded the title by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. She worked for the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) as an Associate Engineer and at Asdea Software S.r.l. working on finite element modelling and software dissemination for STKO (Scientific Toolkit for OpenSees). 

Currently, her research interests include structural health monitoring, seismic performance of masonry structures, structural heritage conservation, machine-learning for damage detection and physics-informed machine-learning.

Francesca is also an Engineer Trainee at SARAID UK, learning about damage assessment of existing structures in the aftermath of earthquakes.

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