Our Team
Alex Zanotti
Alberto Savino
He currently works as a wind tunnel test engineer at Politecnico di Milano. He earned a Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering and completed his Ph.D. with honors in Aerospace Engineering in 2023 from Politecnico di Milano, during which he focused on the coupling between DUST and MBDyn for aeroservoelastic modeling. Specializing in interactional aerodynamics of rotary wings, his expertise is dedicated to the application of these principles to the new-generation aircraft. He is responsible for the technical development of DUST for Politecnico di Milano.
Andrea Colli
He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Fluid and Aerodynamics Research Group at the University of Bristol, and he holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Politecnico di Milano.
His field of interest is rotary-wing aerodynamics, in particular blade-vortex interaction and rotor-wake interaction, and he is now working on the aeroacoustics of eVTOL aircraft. He has extensive experience in wind-tunnel testing and, to complement his skills in experimental aerodynamics, he joined the DUST team, where he combines his knowledge of fluid dynamics with his passion for programming to implement new features and maintain the codebase
Alessandro Cocco
He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Extended Reality Flight Simulation and Control Lab at the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center of the University of Maryland. He earned a Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 2019 and his Ph.D. with Honors in 2023 at Politecnico di Milano.
He joined the DUST project as developer in 2020 and since then he has contributed with more than 300 commits: in particular he has developed the nonlinear vortex lattice element, improved the coupling with MBDyn, and the wake formulation.
Daniele Granata
He is a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Milano; his main research interests are Rotor Aerodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aeroacoustics. Graduated in Aeronautical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, his M.Sc. thesis was concerned with Tiltrotor Aircraft preliminary design and aerodynamic stability derivatives estimation, using DUST. His doctoral research at Politecnico di Milano, is focused on the topic “Interactional aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of vertical take-off and landing aircraft for urban air mobility”.
Francesco Caccia
He is a PhD student at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of Politecnico di Milano. He graduated in Aeronautical Engineering in the same department in 2021 with a thesis on ice accretion on wind turbine blades. He is currently developing tools to study ice accretion and aeroacoustics on flexible rotors using high- and mid-fidelity codes under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Guardone. In DUST, Francesco is contributing to the implementation of the aeroacoustic module and expanding the code capabilities for wind turbines
Luyiza Das
She is a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. Her M.Sc. thesis focused on rotorcraft aerodynamics and aeroacoustics, with a particular interest in Urban Air Mobility. It involved the design of a quadrotor for aerodynamic and acoustic performance, combining numerical simulations with DUST and wind tunnel experiments to characterize its behaviour. Currently, she is working on the in-flight optimization and wind tunnel testing of a distributed propulsion wing, integrating experimental investigations with numerical simulations.
Gemma Bucherelli
She is a research assistant at Politecnico di Milano. Her main interests involve aerodynamics aeroacoustics and rotor dynamics. She is currently focusing on the aerodynamic and aeroacoustic investigation of a quad-rotor eVTOL aircraft, with the aim of contributing to the optimization of this and other VTOL configurations in order to reach the goal of their entry-into-service. She graduated in Aeronautical Engeneering and her Master Thesis provided a preliminary characterization of the quad-rotor model coupling a numerical analysis using DUST and an experimental campaign in the new acoustic wind tunnel built at Politecnico di Milano.
Previous Members
- Davide Montagnani, co-creator
- Matteo Tugnoli, co-creator