Fernando Branco

Fernando A. Branco, co-founder of the CORE Group, is a Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at IST – University of Lisbon and Past-President of the Civil Engineering Department. He was President of Portuguese Association of Structural Engineers (APEE), President of the European Council of Civil Engineers (ECCE) and President of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE). His research activity is illustrated by the supervision of 23 PhD theses, 100 MSc theses, co-authorship of 15 books, 500 scientific papers, 1000 technical reports and 8 patents. He has been consultant for major Public Works in Portugal like the S. João Bridge (world’s longest railway span in cantilever construction), Macau-Taipa Bridge (in China) and Vasco da Gama Bridge (the longest in Europe). He holds several international awards among which an award from the Polish Government, the title of “Honorary Senator” by the European Economic Forum, Advisory Professor by Tongji University and Honorary Member by IABSE.

António Duarte

António Duarte joined the Composites Research Group in 2019, to participate as a Research Fellow in the FCT-funded project ‘FireFloor – Fire Behaviour of GFRP Composite Panels for Rehabilitation of Building Floors’. He has a PhD and an MSc in Civil Engineering, from IST-UL, both in the areas of structural and computational mechanics. He is currently studying the influence of extreme temperatures on the properties of composites. Previously, he developed his investigation on the experimental characterization and numerical modelling of steel, concrete and steel-concrete composite structures and on the numerical modelling of FRP composite structures.

Inês Rosa

Inês Rosa joined CORE Group in 2016 to develop her master dissertation about the mechanical behaviour of GFRP pultruded materials at elevated temperature. She received her PhD degree in Civil Engineering in 2022 from Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon) for her research on the fire behaviour of concrete structures reinforced with GFRP bars. Her PhD thesis was developed within the scope of project “FireComposite – Fire Behaviour of Reinforced Concrete Structures Incorporating FRP Composites”. Currently working as a research fellow at CERIS (IST), her research interests include the mechanical and bond behavior at elevated temperature of FRP materials, structural behaviour and fire performance of concrete members reinforced with FRP bars.

João Pedro Firmo

João Pedro Firmo joined the CORE Group in 2009 to develop his master dissertation about the fire behaviour of reinforced concrete structures strengthened with fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) systems, topic which he pursued to get his PhD degree in Civil Engineering (2015) at Instituto Superior Técnico – University of Lisbon. He currently focuses his research activities on topics related to FRP strengthening systems, concrete structures reinforced with FRP bars and FRP composite sandwich panels, including their behaviour at elevated temperatures and under exposure to fire.

José Gonilha

José Gonilha joined the CORE Group in 2010 as a research assistant on the PONTALUMIS project which envisage to develop a hybrid GFRP-concrete structural system for footbridges. In 2011 he enrolled on the Instituto Superior Técnico – University of Lisbon – Civil Engineering PhD programme, investigating hybrid GFRP-concrete structural systems, obtaining his degree in 2014. Since then, his research has been focused on the structural behaviour of FRP structures, in particular developing structural systems with enhanced seismic behaviour and damage progression models for finite element models structural analysis.

Mário Arruda

PhD at IST from University of Lisbon in Computational Mechanics applied to Civil Engineering, using damage mechanics to simulate the behaviour of concrete structures. During the first years of Post-Doc in ICIST performing research in: composite structures, more precisely orthotropic damage mechanics; thermal-mechanical numerical analysis, for the simulation of fire behavior; applying higher-order beam theories (Carrera Unified Formulation), to study the behaviour of GFRP sandwich panels. At the moment starting research in the field of protection of houses against the actions of Wildland Fire.
Works in CERIS at IST as a Research Associate.

Mário Garrido

Mário Garrido is a member of the CORE Group since 2011. He received his PhD degree in Civil Engineering in 2016 from IST, University of Lisbon, for his work on the development of FRP composite sandwich panel systems for building rehabilitation. He continued to develop this topic during his Post-doc, collaborating with the pultrusion industry, and is currently still engaged in research on the fire behaviour and resistance of FRP sandwich panels. His recent research activities also focus on the sustainability of FRP in construction, where he leads projects aiming at the development of bio-based resin systems and bio-composites.

Mário Sá

Mário Sá joined the CORE Group in 2009 to obtain his PhD degree in Civil Engineering, at IST/UL (2015), concerning the analysis of pultruded GFRP multicellular decks panels, with application to pedestrian bridges. That doctoral research led to the design of the 1st GFRP-steel hybrid footbridge built in Portugal. Previously, at IST/UL, he developed his MSc dissertation about the mechanical and structural behavior of FRP – pultruded GFRP elements. He currently focuses his research on different aspects of FRP materials for civil engineering applications, namely the structural safety of pultruded FRP profiles, the behaviour of composite FRP sandwich panels at elevated temperatures and under sustained loads.

Adriana Azevedo

Adriana Azevedo joined the Composites Research Group in 2017 after obtaining her Master degree in Civil Engineering (area of expertise – Structures) from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon. Currently her goal is to study the fire resistance behavior of reinforced concrete structures strengthened with advanced FRP systems, such as prestressed CFRP systems.

André Castelo

André Castelo joined the CORE Group in 2014 to develop his masters dissertation regarding the development of a pre-fabricated a modular house for emergency housing in disaster zones using glass fibre reinforced polymers (GFRP) in structural profiles and sandwich panels.

In 2015, he began is PhD course in Civil engineering (on-going) researching the durability of GFRP profiles, stairs and gratings when exposed to different aggressive environments. During the investigation, a wide inspection of several water and treatment plant was undertook and the results analysed in order to create an Inspection, diagnosis and rehabilitation system for GFRP materials from production to in-service stage. In parallel, an experimental campaign was developed to predict the durability of GFRP materials in different environments, focusing on Natural weathering, UV radiation and chemical exposure.

António Renato Bicelli

António Renato Albuquerque Bicelli got his Master´s degree in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE/UFRJ) in 2021 with emphasis on Structures and Materials, where he studied the numerical simulation of the thermal response in the design of fixed-ended CFS columns failing in flexural-torsional mode at elevated temperatures. He received his Civil Engineering Bachelor’s degree from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), with one year of an exchange program at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). In 2022, he joined the CORE Group to work in the numerical thermal simulation of wildfire action in residential dwellings and is pursuing a PhD in CERIS-IST.

Bruno Aguirre Tessaro

Bruno Aguirre’s background has its roots in the Computational Mechanics field. He completed his Mechanical Engineering  bachelor’s degree in Brazil at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) where he started his scientific career working with the simulation of particle laden gravity currents. Right after, he initiated his Master’s in Computational Mechanics with a joint degree between Barcelona Tech (UPC) and the École Centrale de Nantes (ECN), where he graduated as one of the top students. After working some time in the industry, he decided to return to academia by joining the Marie Curie PhD program hosted at  Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and the École Centrale de Nantes, working with thermo-mechanical modelling of GFRP profiles subjected to fire. In 2021, after consistent collaborations, he was invited to join the CORE Group.

Carlos Seruti

Carlos A. Seruti joined the CORE Group in 2022 as a research student in the Reliable-FRP Project (Development of Reliability Based Design Guidelines for FRP Structures). He holds a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering with an emphasis on Structures and Materials from the Instituto Alberto Luiz Coimbra de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa de Engenharia (COPPE) at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Brazil. His master’s thesis involved the mechanical characterization and structural performance of pultruded (fiberglass composite) elements. He holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and Architecture and Urbanism from the UFRJ. He has experience as Professor of Structures in Civil Engineering and Architecture courses.

Ellon Bernardes

Ellon Bernardes de Assis holds a Civil Engineering bachelor’s degree (2019) from University of Brasília and a M.Sc. in Structural Engineering from University of São Paulo (2021). He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Structural Engineering at the University of São Paulo. He is conducting his research in collaboration with CERIS-IST which includes a 1-year mobility program (2022-2023). His research interests are: computational simulation applied to engineering, fire safety engineering and wildfires. Currently he is working in the use of computational simulation to understand wildfires and increase the safety of buildings.

Eloísa Castilho

Eloísa Castilho joined CORE Group in 2019, within the scope of the FireFloor research project. This project addresses the fire behaviour of GFRP sandwich panels, and Eloísa’s goal is to pursue her PhD studies in this area of expertise. Eloísa graduated in 2004, at the University of Coimbra, and worked as a structural engineer for 5 years. In 2013 she obtained her Master’s degree in Structural Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, having developed her dissertation at the Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC). Afterwards, she worked and carried out her research at LNEC, as a Junior Research Fellow, on the numerical modelling of the thermal-chemo-mechanical behaviour of concrete dams. With the aim of finding new applications for her knowledge, she applied to the FireFloor project and hopes to contribute to its experimental, numerical, and analytical studies.

João Alfredo de Lazzari

João Alfredo de Lazzari became a Building Construction Technician from IFES in 2010 and later, in 2017, got a Civil Engineer bachelor degree from UFES, with an exchange program period at the University of Minnesota. After his graduation, João got his master degree in Civil Engineering, with emphasis in Structures and Materials from COPPE/UFRJ in 2020, where he studied the structural behavior of CFS columns under a couple phenomenon. In 2021, João joined the CORE Group as a PhD Student, and currently aims to develop an accurate design method for GFRP pultruded profiles.

Marina Santos

Marina got her master’s degree in civil engineering from UFPE with a dissertation on the fire structural behaviour of steel columns protected with plaster boards. She received her civil engineering bachelor’s degree from the same university, having a sandwich year in Nantes University. She joined the CORE Group in 2020, as a PhD student in Instituto Superior Técnico, to develop her thesis on the structural behaviour of bio-composites. The main topic of her study is the development of bio-based polymers from wood biomass envisaging their application in the strengthening of concrete structures.

Md Abu Toyob Shahid

Md Abu Toyob Shahid joined CORE Group in 2019. He is from Bangladesh and completed KIC double degree masters from IST, Portugal in Energy Engineering and Management specialized in Renewable Energy and from AGH-UST, Poland in Clean Fossil and Alternative Fuel Energy. He did his MSc thesis on regeneration of catalyst used for carbon capture. Currently he is focusing his research as well as pursuing PhD on the durability and sustainability analysis of fibre reinforced biocomposites for civil engineering applications.

Pedro Cantor

Pedro Cantor is a civil engineer from the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and earned his master’s degree in structural analysis of historic structures at the Universidade do Minho in Portugal, where he studied the behavior of iron bridges and timber structures. He joined the CORE Group to work on the thermal simulation of fire effects in residential buildings and is pursuing a Ph.D. in CERIS-IST, analysing cork as a thermal insulator.

Tarikul Hasan

Tarikul Hasan joined the CORE Group in 2021. He completed his double degree master’s program in Energy Transition in 2021. This double degree included a master’s in Chemical Technology from AGH University of Science and Technology (Poland) and a master´s in Energy Engineering and Management from Instituto Superior Técnico. Prior to that, Tarikul graduated in Petroleum and Mining Engineering from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in 2017. Currently, he is working as Research Assistant in the “Durable-FRP – Towards Durability Design of FRP Composites for Civil Engineering Structures” project, focusing on the development of a durability database, degradation models and design guidelines for FRP composites envisaging civil engineering applications. He is developing his PhD thesis under the scope of this project.

Yuyi Ye

Yuyi Ye joined the CORE Group as a PhD student in 2022. She comes from China and completed her master’s program at Guangdong University of Technology in 2022, where she conducted experimental and analytical studies on the axial compressive behavior of novel FRP-UHPC hybrid bars and hybrid bar-reinforced concrete columns. Her current research activities focus on web crippling and fracture of pultruded FRP profiles at elevated temperature.