SMM News

From pioneering self-aware infrastructure to mentoring the next generation of engineers, Eleni Chatzi is at the forefront of civil engineering’s digital transformation. On the occasion of her promotion to full professor, she discusses her vision for the field, the challenges she faced as ETH Zurich’s youngest assistant professor, and the lessons that continue to shape her research and teaching.

Collaborative release by ETH Zurich and Politecnico di Milano
We are pleased to announce the public release of the dataset “Dynamic Characterization of a Laboratory-Scale Structure”, now freely accessible on Zenodo.

A joint research effort from Politecnico di Milano, ETH Zürich, and TU Delft presents a novel methodology for evaluating uncertainty in InSAR-based monitoring of civil infrastructure.

A new ETH4D-supported collaboration aims to deploy affordable, sensor-based systems to monitor the health of aging bridges across Ghana—enhancing public safety and resilience.

We are proud to share our latest research, led by Ali Jafarabadi (Empa and SMM Group, ETH Zurich), published in Materials & Design. The study introduces self-locking Fe-based shape memory alloy (Fe-SMA) couplers as a high-performance alternative to traditional welded, bolted, or bonded joints — offering new opportunities for fast, durable, and smart structural connections.

The Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring at ETH Zurich is contributing to two leading international conferences this week—SMART 2025 in Linz and EVACES 2025 in Porto—showcasing advances in monitoring, intelligent systems, and physics-enhanced modeling for structural infrastructure.

Researchers from the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring (SMM) and the Future Resilient Systems program of the SEC presented four contributions at the 2025 Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Conference. Their work advances the resilience of cyber-physical systems through innovations in mobile sensing, interpretable AI, and digital twin technologies—demonstrating the group’s interdisciplinary leadership at the intersection of engineering and data science.

Kyriakos Chondrogiannis, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring and ETH Pioneer Fellow, leads Builtstop to success in a major Swiss startup competition.

A recent study led by Marcus Haywood-Alexander, in collaboration with members of the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring, explores the potential and limitations of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) for system identification in dynamical settings.