Vito Rubino

Vito Rubino has recently moved as a faculty member to École Centrale de Nantes, France. He was formerly a Research Scientist in the Department of Aerospace (GALCIT) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he was responsible for the Laboratory Earthquake facilities of Professor Ares J. Rosakis and where he co-supervised PhD students and postdoctoral scholars.

He completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge University working with Professors Norman Fleck and Vikram Deshpande on the quasi-static and dynamic behavior of sandwich structures. Using a combination of experimental, numerical and theoretical tools, he focused on the optimization of sandwich structures for marine construction and the findings of his work have been employed in the new design of double hull tankers with enhanced crashworthiness.

Before then he spent a year at Imperial College, London to conduct his Master's Thesis on a project aimed at developing the next generation of MRI scanners. He then graduated from Politecnico di Torino with a M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in 2003. After his PhD he worked in the aerospace industry at research and development projects with Airbus, in the area of failure and damage mechanics.

He then started a postdoctoral position at the California Institute of Technology with Professors Ares J. Rosakis and Nadia Lapusta, combining his solid mechanics background with his interests in Earth science. He developed numerical simulations and enhanced experimental approaches to leap from photoelasticity and high-speed digital image correlation measurements allowing answering key questions about dynamic ruptures and earthquake physics.

Dr. Rubino is co-leading, in collaboration with Ares J. Rosakis and Nadia Lapusta, a National Science Foundation (NSF) research project aimed at improving our understanding of dynamic friction laws by performing laboratory experiments of mini-earthquakes (Award #1651235). Using the newly developed experimental technique to quantify the behavior of dynamic ruptures and the evolution of dynamic friction, this work will enhance friction formulations for earthquake-producing faults, and thus will contribute to produce a key ingredient for physics-based dynamic rupture simulations and seismic hazard assessment.

• Ph.D. Cambridge University, United Kingdom, 2008
• M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy, 2003 (Summa cum laude)

• Associate Professor, École Centrale de Nantes, France (2022 - )
• Research Scientist, California Institute of Technology (2015 - 2022)
• Senior Postdoctoral Scholar, California Institute of Technology (2013 - 2014)
• Postdoctoral Scholar, California Institute of Technology (2011 - 2013)
• Senior Structural Engineer, Atkins Aerospace, Bristol UK (2009 - 2010)
• Structural Engineer, Atkins Aerospace, Bristol UK (2008 - 2009)
• Research Assistant, Imperial College London (2002-2003)