Davide Lo Presti, Ph.D.
Associate Professor University of Palermo
Italy
Centre for Sustainability and Ecological Transition, UNIPA. Chair of the RILEM Technical Committee APS “Alternative Paving materials – Sustainability” (TC APS 2023 – 2028). Coordinator for UNIPA of the project for the 2-years European Joint Master degree SURPAVE (starting in 2026-2027).
Dr. Lo Presti is Associate Professor at the “Engineering Department” of Università degli studi di Palermo, where he leads a research group engineering smart solutions for sustainable infrastructure. His background is civil engineering with a focus on transport infrastructure. Since 2010 Dr. Lo Presti has authored and co-authored +100 indexed publications in the field (+2000 citations e h-index=24, source: Scopus, December 2023), He has been actively leading activities within RILEM , within editorial boards of at least 5 international journals: amongst these Road Material and Pavement Design , and Rilem Technical Letters . In 2019, Dr. Lo Presti was given a the “Rita Levi Montalcini fellowship” funded by the Italian Ministry for University and Research, to start a tenured-track at University of Palermo after 10 years working at the University of Nottingham alongside Prof. Gordon Airey and Prof. Andrew Collop and with research stays at TU Delft , University of Washington and University of California Davis. He’s extremely active in international activities and, amongst those, He is currently leading the RILEM technical Committee APS on “Alternative Paving materials – Sustainability”, He’s coordinator for the University fo Palermo of the unique 2-years European Joint Master degree on Sustainable and Resilient Pavement Engineering SURPAVE and He is the Chair of the 7th edition of the international symposium on Life-Cycle Assessment for Pavements and Bridges under the new acronym “ROADLCA2026” that will be held in Palermo, Italy, September 30th to October 2nd, 2026.
Dr. Lo Presti research is both applied and fundamental and focuses on developing solutions for engineering sustainability to preserve existing transport infrastructures as well as envisioning the future ones. This is done in constant collaboration with international multi-disciplinary researchers, from both academia and private sector, and with a two-fold approach: 1) implementing new technologies and circular economy into material science, product development and infrastructure management, while 2) tailoring life cycle analyses-based techniques for assessing/meaursing the actual sustainability of the proposed solutions.