Phd in STRUCTURAL AND GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

Luca Masini is Associate Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome, where he has worked since 2011. He earned his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering at Sapienza in 2010, then held positions as Research Fellow (2011–2017) and as a fixed-term Researcher under the RTD-A (2017–2020) and RTD-B (2022–2025) schemes, before his appointment as Associate Professor in April 2025. He has been a registered engineer with the Order of Engineers of the Province of Rome since 2007.

His research addresses the mitigation of tunnelling effects on historical buildings, the seismic behaviour of geosynthetic-reinforced earth retaining walls, and the seismic behaviour of large earth dams. Part of his early formation took place abroad, as a visiting researcher at the Cambridge University Engineering Department and at Deltares in Delft, working on laboratory tests on compensation grouting.

Since 2017 he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Sapienza — including Geotecnica, Geotechnical Engineering (in English), Fondazioni e Opere di Sostegno and Stabilità dei pendii — along with lectures in second-level Master’s programmes and doctoral seminars; he has been Cultore della Materia (ICAR/07) since 2012 and has supervised MSc theses in Civil Engineering.

He has taken part in six consecutive DPC–ReLUIS research cycles (2010–2026) on national seismic design standards, in the PRIN 2017 project REDREEF with five partner universities, and, since 2023, in the PNRR RETURN project (PE3 – Ground Instabilities). He has also contributed to applied studies, including the analysis of monitoring data for monuments along Line C (2017–2021 and 2023–2024), a tunnel in complex formations for Quadrilatero Marche Umbria S.p.A. (2022–2023), an embankment feasibility study for InfraEngineering S.r.l. (2022), and work for the Ministry of Defence (2025).

He is President of the Geotechnical Commission of the Order of Engineers of the Province of Rome and a member of the Executive Board of the Gruppo Nazionale di Ingegneria Geotecnica (GNIG), He has been speaker at several national and international conferences. He reviews for international geotechnical journals, among them Géotechnique, Geotextiles and Geomembranes, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, and Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology and is a member of the Associazione Geotecnica Italiana (AGI).