Antonina Pirrotta, Ph.D., P.E., F.EMI, F.ASCE, a full professor in the engineering department at the University of Palermo, Italy, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Pirrotta has been head of the Ph.D. School of the University of Palermo since 2023, the head of CIDIS since 2021, a member of the EMI Board of Governors in 2021-24, and an EMI fellow since 2020. She received an International Excellence Fellowship from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2021, a Fellowship (2021-24) by the University of Liege, Belgium, and a Honorary Research Fellowship (2014-19) by the Department of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Liverpool.
She has also received the following awards: 2023 ITWIIN, the higher-education award for the notable commitment to higher education activities in the national and international academic context, and for having shown a high capacity for disseminating scientific knowledge in dissemination and collaboration initiatives; appreciation award for outstanding service and dedication as chair of the EMI2023 International Conference; and 2020 EASD Senior Research Prize in the area of Development of Methodologies for Structural Dynamics, for her important contributions in the fields of passive control, multibody systems, continuum mechanics, stochastic mechanics, health monitoring (first European woman), among others.
Pirrotta has made outstanding research contributions in structural engineering and engineering mechanics, with emphasis on structural control, fractional calculus, structural health monitoring, and damage identification. With over 100 published papers in the most prestigious journals in the field of structural dynamics, she is a leading researcher in the field of vibrations and collaborates with renowned institutions worldwide. She is an inventor of an Anti-Vibration Knob (Italian Patent Application No. 102021000004691).
Her achievements resulted in many scientific recognitions, which include appointment as chair of the Stochastic Mechanics Group of AIMETA and of the IDEA Innovative Dynamics Experiments Association (2022), several fellowships, memberships on scientific committees of various key international conferences, a membership on the Advisory Board of the MSCA COFUND Doctoral Programme at the University of Innsbruck, and many invitations as plenary speaker at several international conferences. Pirrotta has organized and co-organized an exceptionally large number of international conferences, minisymposia, and summer schools in Italy and all over the world.
She is an associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics (ASCE) and of Meccanica, two top journals in the field. Additionally, she is a member of the editorial board of various international scientific journals. She has been a visiting professor at universities such as Tongji University, Columbia, Liverpool, and TU Wien. Antonina Pirrotta’s contributions and leadership have made her a notable figure in structural mechanics and a role model for women in science.
Pirrotta graduated in civil engineering from the Palermo University in 1987, with laude and mention. For six years after graduation, she worked as freelance structural engineer. Subsequently, she took her doctorate in structural engineering and worked as postdoctoral researcher until 1998.
