HISTORIC MASONRY STRUCTURES
HISTORIC MASONRY STRUCTURES
HISTORIC MASONRY STRUCTURES
TEACHERS
Maurizio Angelillo
Professor at Università degli Studi di Salerno
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Professor
Maurizio Angelillo is Professor of Statics and Strength of Materials at the School of Engineering and Architecture of the “Università degli Studi di Salerno”. Architect and structural expert with multi-disciplinary research interests including masonry mechanics, and biomechanics, trained in Architecture at the University of Naples and in Mechanics at the University of Minnesota, he and his group are actively working on the kinematics and on the equilibrium of masonry buildings. Angelillo, who is the Editor and the co-author of the CISM books “Mechanics of Masonry Structures” and “Discrete Computational Mechanics of Masonry Structures”, works on unilateral models for masonry since the early 1980s, being the author of more than 50 papers on the application of these models to real masonry structures and masonry elements such as arches, domes, vaults and spiral stairs.
Philippe Block
Professor at ETH Zurich
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Professor
Alessio Bortot
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Professor
Professor at Università di Trieste
Alessio Bortot, an Architect and a “Doctor Europaeus” since 2016 in Architecture, City and Design, with a specialization in Representation, is Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering and Architecture in the University of Trieste since 2021.
He has been professor for the course of “Descriptive geometry”, “Advanced technologies for representation” and “Digital 3D modelling” at the IUAV University of Venezia, at the faculty of Engineering of the University of Padova, at the IED of Venice and at the École National Supérieure des Travaux Publics in Yaoundé (Camerun). He has participated to national (PRIN 2010-2011) and international research projects (James Turrell. Roden Crater Project – Florence 2007; Jean François Niceron. Prospettiva, catottrica e magia artificiale – Rome 2013.
Gianmarco de Felice
Professor at Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Gianmarco de Felice is professor of structural engineering at the Department of Engineering of Roma Tre University. He is coordinator of the PhD school in Civil Engineering at Roma Tre University, chair of the RILEM Technical Committee TC-250 CSM “Composites for Sustainable strengthening of Masonry” and member of the drafting Committee of the Charter of Rome on the Resilience of Art Cities to Natural Catastrophes. He has been the scientific coordinator for the design of engineering projects on heritage conservation and structural rehabilitation, such as the restoration of the Farnese Palace in Ischia di Castro and that of the Abbey of San Clemente in Casauria supported by the World Monuments Fund and awarded by the Domus International Prize for Restoration and Conservation.
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Professor
Paula Fuentes González
Professor at Universidad de Alcalà
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Professor
Santiago Huerta
Professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Santiago Huerta is a professor of Structural Design at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM). President of the Spanish Construction History Society (SEDHC). He works as consultant for Historical Constructions Analysis (Cathedrals of Mallorca; Santiago de Compostela; Lonja de Mallorca; San Juan de los Reyes, etc.). Director of publications of the Juan de Herrera Institute. Author of more than 80 publications: books (editor), articles and papers, mainly on historic masonry structures and Construction History. Prize for the ‘Dissemination of Architecture’ related to the Exhibition and Catalog Guastavino Co. the Reinvention of the Vault (COAM), 2003. Telford Gold Medal of the British Civil Engineers Association London, 2011.
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Professor
Antonino Iannuzzo
Tenured Assistant Professor at University of Sannio
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Professor
Antonino Iannuzzo is a professor in Solid and Structural Mechanics at the University of Sannio and Rita Levi Montalcini fellow. His research involves the kinematics and statics of 3D unilateral structures through new optimisation strategies. He obtained his PhD from the University of Naples Federico II with a dissertation introducing an innovative approach to modelling fractures in masonry, which led to the development of the PRD and CDF methods. From 2018 to March 2022, Antonino worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich within the Block Research Group. In 2022, he served as a Senior Lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. In recognition of his international career achievements, he was awarded the prestigious Rita Levi Montalcini Fellowship by the Italian Ministry of University and Research in late 2022.
John Ochsendorf
Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Professor
Esther Redondo
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Professor
Professor at European University of Madrid
Architect, graduated from the School of Architecture, Polytechnic University of Madrid. Working as a structural designer and consultant since 1999, as co-founder of the GV408 Studio, since 2001 she teaches structural design at the School of Architecture of the European University of Madrid, where she has been in charge of several subjects in the area of structures, as well as joint subjects in the area of technology. She also worked as a visiting professor at ETSAM (Madrid), EaT (Toledo), Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid) and Universidad de Ambato (Ecuador). PhD in 2013 -"Tile vaulting in Spain in the 19th Century: The transformation of a constructive system"-, her current field of research is the history of construction and structures. In this context, she has written numerous publications and participated in the organization of related congresses in Madrid (2013), Segovia (2015) and Soria (2019).
LECTURERS and TUTORS
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Ricardo Maia Avelino
Post-Doctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich
Lecturer
Ricardo Maia Avelino is a researcher and structural engineer with interests in historic structures, sustainable design, and XR/AI applications in engineering. In 2023, he completed his PhD at ETH Zurich with the Block Research Group (BRG). His dissertation on Thrust Network Optimization for Masonry Assessment was awarded the ETH Medal for outstanding doctoral thesis. Later, he joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in New York as a structural engineer, contributing to complex international projects and developing AI tools to streamline structural design. In 2025, Ricardo returned to ETH Zurich as the Design++ Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate at the BRG, while continuing to serve as a structural engineering consultant at SOM.
Alessandro Dell'Endice
Post-Doctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich
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Lecturer
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Research Fellow
Amal Gerges
Research Fellow at Università Degli Studi di Cagliari
Amal Gerges holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Civil Engineering from the University of Cagliari and has been awarded the Doctor Europaeus certificate. Her doctoral dissertation, Modelling Masonry as a Continuum: Finite Element Analysis Using Abaqus, focused on the stability of masonry structures under static and dynamic loads, with particular emphasis on bridging the gap between limit analysis-based approaches and finite element modeling through the treatment of masonry as a continuum. She is currently an assegnista di ricerca (postdoctoral researcher) at the Department of Architecture, Roma Tre University, where her research focuses on the structural assessment and conservation of historic masonry structures, combining finite element modeling, limit analysis, and computational mechanics. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cagliari, contributing to a nationally funded project on the structural behaviour of Nuragic architecture. During a research stay at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM), she worked under the supervision of Prof. Santiago Huerta on limit analysis methods for masonry structures. Before pursuing academia, she worked on construction and rehabilitation projects in Lebanon and Syria and has been actively involved in tutoring and delivering seminars in Structural Dynamics, Seismic Engineering, and finite element modeling.
Andrea Montanino
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Lecturer
Andrea Montanino is Associate Professor of Mechanics of Solid and Structures at the Pegaso University since February 2026. He obtained his PhD in Computational Mechanics and Advanced Materials from the University of Pavia in 2015. His thesis was awarded as the Best PhD thesis in Computational Mechanics of Fluids by the Italian Group of Computational Mechanics. Since then, his research has focused on different applications of computational mechanics, including fluid-dynamics for risk assessment, biomechanics and computational methods for masonry structures. From 2016 to 2019 he has been Post-doc Fellow at the Polytechnic University of Milan, working on the biomechanics of the human cornea, and from 2019 to 2024 has been Assistant Professor at the University of Naples Federico II. Between 2024 and 2025 has been Innovation Leader at the International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering. He is coauthor of about 40 publications on peer-reviewed international journals.
Fabian Bernal Orozco Barrera
Lecturer at National Autonomous University of Mexico
Fabian Bernal Orozco Barrera: Fabian specializes in masonry vaults and domes, using static and pseudo-static thrust line techniques to assess the safety of historical masonry buildings. He studied architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and earned a master’s degree in Restoration. He did a research stay at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in 2019 at the Department of Structures and Physics of Buildings. He is a structures professor at the Faculty of Architecture at UNAM, collaborating as an independent researcher. He has worked as an active consultant on the assessment of Masonry Structures in Mexico for private and public entities since 2020. He has worked on the restoration and retrofitting of masonry buildings for the post-2017 earthquakes in Mexico.
He has been at the HIMASS Summer School every year since 2021, conducting some of the surveys for the case studies and participating as a teaching assistant. Currently, he is a PhD. Student of the Italian National Doctorate, Defense Against Natural Risks and Ecological Transition of Built Environment, University of Catania /Cagliari.
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Lecturer
Natalia Pingaro
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Lecturer
Research Contractor at Politecnico di Milano
Felix Rodriguez
Félix Rodríguez is an architect specialized on structural analysis, currently working as a consultant for GV408 studio and as a lecturer on structural design at European University of Madrid.
He completed his BSc in 2021 and his MSc in 2023 at Escuela Técnica Superior de Madrid, where he specialized on historical masonry structures and thrust line analysis, writing his bachelor thesis on the interventions and structural analysis of San Fernando church in Mexico under the supervision of Santiago Huerta, he has taken part as an assistant on the tile vaulting workshop at Polytechnic University of Madrid and as a tutor in the previous editions of the Summer School on Historic Masonry Structures.
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Lecturer
Marialuigia Sangirardi
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Lecturer
Research Associate at University of Oxford
Marilù is a Research Associate at the Department of Engineering Science of the University of Oxford where she's working on the development of new advanced and non-invasive in situ testing methods for historic masonry. She received her PhD in Structural Engineering in 2016 from the Technical University of Bari and the University of Minho, where she spent a visiting period as part of the ISISE Historic Masonry Group lead by Professor P.B. Lourenço. She has been working as scientific consultant in international research projects and as research fellow in Bari, Pavia and Rome, in the Research Group coordinated by Gianmarco de Felice. Her research interests include constitutive modelling of masonry, computer vision based monitoring strategies, numerical simulations of various boundary value problems, under static and dynamic conditions, with particular emphasis on historical constructions, low-impact retrofitting techniques and soil-structure interaction. She serves as reviewer for several international journals in preservation, structural engineering, and mechanics.
Anjo Weichbrodt
Freelance conservator
Anjo is a freelance conservator for built heritage based in Basel, Switzerland. He started as an apprentice in wall painting conservation in France, then pursued further studies and work in Rome, Italy. He completed the conservation master’s program at SUPSI in Switzerland in 2012 alongside the postgraduate internship program at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles.
Throughout his career, he extended his experience in monitoring and assessing material deterioration and properties to make informed preservation decisions that prioritize minimal intervention. In that capacity, he was part of a research group at ETH Zurich working on the Lausanne Cathedral from 2019 to 2025.
In 2021, Anjo first attended the HIMASS summer school to develop his understanding of the structural performance of historic masonry and later spent a sabbatical semester at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) to take classes with Santiago Huerta.
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Freelancer
Teaching Assistants
Tvrtko Renić
Research Associate at the University of Zagreb
Tvrtko Renić is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Civil engineering where he has been working at the department for structures since 2017 on research and teaching in the feild of new and existing concrete and masonry structures. He received his PhD in structural engineering at University of Zagreb in 2022. His main fields of interest are seismic analysis and design, existing masonry structures, strengthening methods, graphical methods of analysis and design and use of non-metallic reinforcement. He is part of a research project that aims to study typical unreinforced masonry buildings in Zagreb with emphasis of their assessment and post-earthquake retrofitting.
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Research Fellow
Habib Katouli
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PhD Student
University of Naples Federico II (Italy)
Habib is a second-year PhD student in Structural and Seismic Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II. His research focuses on the dynamics of masonry structures, their monitoring, and strategies for seismic and static interventions. He completed a second MSc in Italy, concentrating on the structural assessment of historic masonry vaults using TNA. With over five years of professional experience in the retrofitting and rehabilitation of different historic buildings in Iran, Habib is currently engaged in the assessment, design, and intervention of existing masonry structures. He attended the 2022 edition of the HIMASS.
Elizabeta Šamec
Elizabeta Šamec is an Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Civil Engineering, where she conducts research and teaches in the Department of Engineering Mechanics. Her research focuses on the development and application of advanced computational methods for structural analysis, with particular emphasis on form-finding techniques and the Discrete Element Method (DEM). Her main research interests include the analysis of historical masonry structures, numerical modelling, seismic assessment and retrofitting. Her current work focuses on the restoration of the Zagreb Cathedral following the 2020 earthquakes. She has also participated in several research projects related to sustainable construction materials and digital fabrication. She leads the Normalisation and Best Practices Working Group within the COST Action Open Network on DEM Simulations (ON-DEM), coordinating international efforts to develop benchmark examples and best-practice guidelines for DEM applications.
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Assistant Professor
Ilaria Scarcelli
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Ilaria Scarcelli is a PhD student in Structural Mechanics at the Department of Architecture, Construction and Design of the Polytechnic University of Bari. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Building Engineering and her Master's degree in Civil Engineering. During her Master’s thesis, she focused on the field of masonry structures and membrane analysis, particularly on the case study of star vaults the Thrust Surface Method. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research on masonry, with a specific focus on the study of masonry dynamics. She attended the 2024 edition of the HIMASS.
PhD Student