About Giovanna

Born in South Italy, I received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Building Engineering and Architecture from the Università degli studi di Pavia, where I investigated sustainable materials and construction technologies for developing countries. To deepen my knowledge of solid mechanics and numerical methods, I enrolled in the PhD program of the Structural Engineering Department at Politecnico di Milano.
During this time, I was awarded a Progetto Rocca Doctoral Fellowship, becoming a visiting student at MIT, in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I took my PhD in 2012, with a thesis on finite element modeling of thermal induced fracture propagation. Combining my technical skill in solid mechanics with my interest in sustainability, I have been researching next generation energy storage devices, first as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at Brown University under the supervision of Prof. Allan Bower and Prof. Pradeep Guduru, and since March 2014 as a member of the research group of Prof. Craig Carter and Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang at the Department of Materials Science of MIT. To gain industry experience, in 2017 I moved to the San Francisco Bay area and I joined the Energy Storage team at Bosch.

Research Interests

Giovanna's research interests lie within the broad fields of computational solid mechanics, energy storage and conversion and coarse-grained modeling of polymers, with a particular focus on:

  • Computational solid mechanics
  • Modeling of coupled electrochemical-mechanical systems
  • Energy storage materials modeling
  • Aging of batteries and fuel cells
  • DNA sequencing and bio-sensing
  • coarse-grained modeling of polymers
  • Fracture mechanics

Awards

  • Bosch Research Fellowship 2020 - Recognizing the most innovative research proposal with 6-months sabbatical at Stanford University focused on DNA modeling
  • Invited speaker at Rising Stars in Nuclear Science and Engineering Symposium - a biannual symposium that promotes women on the verge of launching their careers (MIT news article)
  • Roberto Rocca Doctoral Fellowship - Awarded for a research stay as a visiting PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from Progetto Roberto Rocca, 2010 - Fall semester 2010 and Spring semester 2011