In 1997, when I was an undergraduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Padova, Italy, I called in to Professor Bruno Atzori´s office to ask him to supervise my final project. After a quick chat, he proposed that I should do some theoretical work on something strange called multiaxial fatigue. After getting my degree in Mechanical Engineering, I started doing my PhD in the University of Padova, continuing to work on the problem of estimating fatigue damage in unnotched metals subjected to multiaxial loading paths. In 2000, having formalised the Modified Wöhler Curve Method, I sent a long e-mail to Professor David Taylor at Trinity College, Dublin, to ask whether I could spend a few months in Ireland investigating, under his supervision, whether it was possible for my multiaxial fatigue criterion to be applied in conjunction with the Theory of Critical Distances. Professor Taylor replied with a very enthusiastic e-mail, and on 12 July 2001 I caught a plane at Venice airport to fly to Ireland: since 2001 I have spent at least 6 months every year lecturing and doing research in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin. In 2005, when I was really enjoying my IRCSET Post-Doc fellowship in Dublin, I was appointed Associate Professor in Structural Integrity at the University of Ferrara, Italy: even if, after taking up the above position, my professional life kept getting busier and busier, I managed to go on with my teaching as well as with my research activities both at the University of Ferrara (Italy), the University of Udine (Italy), and Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland). Since the end of the 90s, I have been working on different aspects of the Structural Integrity discipline, by mainly focussing my attention on problems related to the static and fatigue assessment of engineering materials and components. In particular, I have attempted to devise engineering methods suitable for designing components (experiencing different kinds of stress concentration phenomena) against fatigue as well as against static failures. According to my modus operandi, I have performed both theoretical and experimental investigations and all the design methods I have formalised so far have always been validated through a systematic experimental work.
