Presidency and Management
President
Rui Pinho graduated in civil engineering from the University of Porto (Portugal) in 1995. He then began his research career at Imperial College in London, obtaining an MSc and PhD in earthquake engineering. He then moved to Pavia in 2001.
He is a full professor at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the University of Pavia. He has held several high-level academic and scientific positions throughout his career. His professional path reflects a strong commitment to applied research, technological innovation, and advanced training. He is the co-founder and previously the technical director of Seismosoft, a company specialised in developing advanced software tools for earthquake engineering, and from 2009 to 2013, the founding secretary-general of the GEM Foundation (Global Earthquake Model), an OECD-backed organisation dedicated to the development of global seismic risk models.
Professor Pinho is the author of more than 400 scientific publications and has been invited as a keynote speaker at numerous international conferences. He has led major research projects funded by national and European institutions and has contributed significantly to developing advanced seismic vulnerability assessment and risk reduction methodologies. His achievements have been recognised with several prestigious awards, including the EERI Shah’s Innovation Prize and multiple best paper awards from international structural engineering associations. In July 2024, he was also Chair of WCEE, the World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held in Milan.
On April 15th, 2025, he was appointed the President of the Eucentre Foundation.
