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My research interests are in the fields of Calculus of Variations and PDEs, with particular focus on applications to mathematical models of Elasticity, Fracture, Damage, Debonding , Tumor Growth and, more recently, Traffic Flows. The main lines of investigation may be summarized as follows:

• formulation and study of debonding models, which couple in a very complex way a partial differential equation on moving domains and suitable energy criteria ruling the growth of such domains

• analysis of nonconvex Rate-Independent Systems and their Vanishing-Inertia and -Viscosity approximations (IBV solutions)

• investigation and modelling of defects, fracture and fatigue effects in brittle or cohesive materials via a sharp interface or a phase-field approach

• linearization and dimension reduction for variational models of elasticity subject to live loads, namely those forces depending on the current deformation of the elastic body

• rigorous validation of the sharp interface limit for phase-field models of tumor growth described by the Cahn-Hilliard equation

• well-posedness and deterministic many-particle approximation of degenerate second order traffic models