The research activity of Eleonora Bruschi focuses on the seismic protection of structures through base isolation systems and energy dissipation devices, combining experimental and numerical investigations and addressing broader topics such as bridge safety assessment.She earned a Ph.D. cum laude in Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering in 2021. During her doctoral studies, she spent a research period at the University of Washington (Seattle) as a post-graduate researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Paolo Calvi, supported by the Ermenegildo Zegna Founders Scholarship. Her Ph.D. work led to the development of the PS-LED, an innovative energy dissipation device for the seismic protection of frame buildings, which was later patented and licensed to a leading manufacturer of seismic protection systems. The technology transfer was achieved through the Switch2Product innovation challenge from PoliHub, Italy’s leading startup incubator, which awarded the project a six-month incubation and a €30,000 grant.In 2025, she was awarded a €20,000 grant within the IDEA League Fellowship Program for the project HERO – Hospital Earthquake Resilience and Operability. The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach to quantify the seismic resilience of hospital facilities, integrating engineering, organizational, and social perspectives in collaboration with Assistant Professor Simona Bianchi from TU Delft and Prof. Božidar Stojadinović from ETH Zurich.

Career

Nov. 2018 – Nov. 2021: PhD in Architecture, Built Environment and Construction EngineeringPolitecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy)Final mark: Cum LaudeTitle of the thesis: Seismic retrofit of RC framed buildings with supplementary energy dissipation: modelling and application of a novel Lead Damper

Mar. 2015 – Oct. 2017: Master’s degree in Civil engineering - LM 23 Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy)Final mark: 110/110, cum laude

Sep. 2011 – Feb. 2015 Bachelor’s degree Civil Engineering - L-7 Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy)Final mark: 101/110

Research

The research activity of Eleonora Bruschi focuses on the seismic protection of structures, with particular attention to the development and assessment of advanced mitigation strategies. Her work primarily addresses energy dissipation devices and seismic isolation systems, investigated through an integrated experimental and numerical approach aimed at improving structural performance under seismic loading.In parallel, her research encompasses the safety assessment of existing bridges. Since 2021, she has been involved in the FABRE Consortium, contributing to the structural evaluation and performance assessment of several Italian bridges within a national monitoring and management framework.More recently, her research has expanded to the study of the functionality and seismic resilience of hospital buildings. In this context, she is developing simplified methodologies for the quantitative assessment of hospital resilience, based on unified performance indices capable of capturing post-earthquake functionality loss by integrating indicators associated with individual building components.

Selected Publications

Pubblicazioni selezionate

Çavdar, Esengül, Gökhan Özdemir, Eleonora Bruschi, Virginio Quaglini, Uğurcan Özçamur (2025). DYNAMIC FRICTION COEFFICIENT OF SLIDING ISOLATORS AT DIFFERENT LOW TEMPERATURES AND EXPOSURE TIMES, Journal of earthquake engineering, DOI: 10.1080/13632469.2025.2523775.

Eleonora Bruschi, Virginio Quaglini (2024). RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF TWO ARCHETYPE RC BUILDINGS WITH HYSTERETIC DAMPERS, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 176, DOI: 10.1016/j.soildyn.2023.108290.

Eleonora Bruschi, Virginio Quaglini (2022). ASSESSMENT OF A NOVEL HYSTERETIC FRICTION DAMPER FOR THE SEISMIC RETROFIT OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAME STRUCTURES, Structures, Volume 46, pp. 793-811, DOI: 10.1016/j.istruc.2022.10.113.

Eleonora Bruschi, Virginio Quaglini, Paolo M. Calvi (2022). A SIMPLIFIED DESIGN PROCEDURE FOR SEISMIC UPGRADE OF FRAME STRUCTURES EQUIPPED WITH HYSTERETIC DAMPERS, Engineering Structures, Volume 251, 113504, DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2021.113504.

Eleonora Bruschi, Paolo M. Calvi, Virginio Quaglini (2021). CONCENTRATED PLASTICITY MODELLING OF RC FRAMES IN TIME-HISTORY ANALYSES, Engineering Structures, Volume 243, 112716, DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2021.112716.

Grants, awards and Honours

2025 – Edilizia sostenibile e sicura. €25,000 funding awarded by Regione Lombardia and MUSA S.c.a.r.l. for the project DyMoND – Dynamic Monitoring and Novelty Detection.Team: Marco Pirrò, Ana Avramova, Eleonora Bruschi, Paolo Borlenghi, Carmelo Gentile.

2022 - Award Ing. Brunello Sarno. Award for the best PhD Thesis in Civil Engineering on topics related to structural concrete (€1.000)

2021 - Switch2Product - PoliHub, Technology Transfer Office of Politecnico di Milano and Officine Innovazione Deloitte. Grant of €30.000 for the project AIDA (Anti-seismic Innovative Durable Affordable System for seismic protection of constructions) focused on the development of a novel energy dissipation device (Italian patent number 102021000018692). Team: Eleonora Bruschi, Carlo Pettorruso, Virginio Quaglini, Gabriele Dubini

2018 - Ermenegildo Zegna Founder’s Scholarship. Grant of $26.100 from the Ermenegildo Zegna Founder’s Scholarship to carry out the Internship at the University of Washington (2019-2020).

Community Service

Eleonora Bruschi is committed to promoting science to a broad audience through diverse initiatives:

In 2024, she began collaborating with the Equal Opportunities and Inclusion Office at Politecnico di Milano to encourage high school girls to pursue STEM disciplines. The program involves visiting classrooms across multiple schools to share her research and let students discover what being a researcher entails. The goal is to empower female students from diverse backgrounds to freely imagine and shape their futures.

Since 2021, she has also engaged with the broader public through media, presenting her MUSA research activities via the open-air Lab MUSA podcast "Sustainability and the City", available on Spotify, and interviews on TV broadcasts (ArezzoTV, Teletruria) about the AIDA project

Since 2022, she has been an active trainer for professional courses organized by leading Italian associations, including ATE (Associazione Tecnologi per l’Edilizia) and CIAS (Centro Internazionale di Aggiornamento Sperimentale-Scientifico). Each year, she delivers at least one course in collaboration with local Orders of Engineers, such as the Ordine degli Ingegneri della Provincia di Milano and the Ordine degli Ingegneri della Provincia di Varese.

Since 2025, Eleonora Bruschi is member of the Innovation Committee of the Joint Research Partnership (JRP) Costruzioni, organized by the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering (DABC) at Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with Fondazione Politecnico di Milano.The Committee is tasked with supporting the platform’s activities, identifying frontier research topics, coordinating discussions with stakeholders, and fostering opportunities for external collaboration and exchange.