Giovanni Vacirca - DC02

Last week was a Training Week #2 in Berlin, hosted by Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), together with my doctoral network of the USES2 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions project. During this intensive week, we not only presented the current status of our doctoral project, but also we attended lectures on: Digital Signal Processing Machine Learning Human Factors in NDE and SHM Additionally, we participated in a stimulating seminar on Gender and Diversity Dimension in Research. One of the most interesting experiences was visiting the BAM laboratories, guided by Ernst Niederleithinger and his students. This week was a valuable opportunity to get to know the other PhD students of the project and their respective supervisors. Thanks to everyone who made this enriching and educational experience possible!

My PhD research focuses on the asset of "High-speed/High-capacity distributed Fiber Bragg Grating sensing for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications". I will achieve this by designing and qualifying Optical Time Stretch (OTS) setups based on FBG sensors, both in laboratory and field settings. The purpose of my PhD are: Investigate various dispersive media to achieve increasingly large dispersion to reach picometers resolution. Another objective is to design and test various OTS setups, starting from the most promising configurations found in literature, aiming to achieve 2D/3D tomographic reconstructions. Lastly, once the best solutions are identified, test them for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) on high-value structures such as composite structures (provided by FABER), metallic pipelines (in collaboration with ENI), and reinforced concrete structures (here at BAM). In line with this, these three companies are expected to host my three secondments. I will also co...

Hello everyone my name Giovanni Vacirca and I was born in 1996. I am Doctoral Candidate number 2 in the USES2 Project of Marie Curie doctoral network. I am Italian and I am from Bologna, I love food and football. Bologna is also where I completed my Bachelor's degree in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering at Alma Mater Studiorum, specializing in Telecommunications.  I then moved to Milan for my Master's degree in Telecommunications with a focus on photonics. After graduating in 2022, I began working as an ASIC Engineer at Nokia near Milan, in the Network Infrastructure division. Specifically I worked on the characterization, designing and assessing performances of Chromatic Dispersion compensation digital filter. After more than a year in the industry, I decided to pursue this doctoral program and since during the development of my thesis I am hosted by CEA in Paris-Saclay, currently I live close to Paris.