Materials Science and Engineering

Biography

Nicola M. Pugno was born in 1972 in Pavia, Italy and is married and has three babies. He holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics, as well as a Ph.D. in Fracture Mechanics and a Ph.D. in Biology. He is a Full Professor of Solid and Structural Mechanics at the University of Trento, Italy and there Founder and Head of the Laboratory of Bio-Inspired and Graphene Nanomechanics (previous Associate Professor, Founder and Head of the Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Nanomechanics “Giuseppe Maria Pugno”, at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy). He is the Scientific Responsible of Graphene Nanocomposites (within the Graphene Flagship) at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy and Full Professor of Materials Science at the Queen Mary University of London, London, UK. He has published about 260 International Journal (Int. J.) papers on Solid-, Structural-, Fracture-, Bio- and Nano-Mechanics in leading international journals (including Nature, Nature Materials and Nature Communications) mainly on nanotubes and graphene and bio-inspired nanomaterials (e.g. mimicking limpet teeth for strength, spider silk for toughness, gecko foot for smart adhesion, lotus leaf for self-cleaning, bone for self-healing, etc.). He is a Reviewer for about 100 Int. J. and is in the Editorial Board of about 40 Int. J., including Academic Editor of PlosOne and Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) as well as Editor-in-Chief of Bio-Inspired Materials and Frontiers in Materials - Mechanics. NMP has received 4 grants from the European Research Council: the 2011 ERC Starting Grant (at the Consolidator level), in 2013 both the two ERC Proof of Concept assigned to Italy and in 2015 a third ERC Proof of Concept.

Research Interest

Natural science and Engineering