Sabrina Vantadori is a distinguished Italian academic in structural engineering with more than two decades of experience in fatigue, fracture mechanics, and structural integrity. She obtained her Master’s degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Parma in 2001 with full marks and earned a PhD in Structural Mechanics from the University of Bologna in 2005, focusing on the fatigue behavior of notched and cracked metallic components. After postdoctoral research at the University of Parma, she progressed through the academic ranks and has been Associate Professor at the University of Parma since 2015, where she is also actively involved in doctoral education and departmental governance.
She has held several important leadership positions, including Deputy Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Civil Engineering and Architecture (2016–2019) and delegate for departmental laboratories. At the international level, she has served as President of ESIS Technical Committee 3 on Fatigue of Engineering Materials and Structures since 2020, Vice Director of the Official Laboratory for Materials and Structures Testing at the University of Parma (2021–2025), Secretary of the Italian Group of Fracture since 2023, and member of the Governing Council of the European Structural Integrity Society. She is also a member of the Council of the International Conference on Fracture and a substitute member of the University of Parma’s Committee for Equal Opportunities and Workplace Well-being (2024–2028). In 2021, she was Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, delivering a graduate course on fracture toughness.
Her editorial activity is one of the most prominent aspects of her international profile. Since 2015, she has served on the editorial boards of numerous high-impact journals in fatigue, fracture, and structural integrity, progressively assuming senior editorial roles including Section Editor, Executive Editor, Co-Editor-in-Chief, and Editor-in-Chief. She currently holds leading editorial positions in major journals of the field, including Editor-in-Chief of Fracture and Structural Integrity (from 2025) and Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Engineering Science (Elsevier, from 2024), confirming her central role in shaping international scientific publishing in structural integrity.
She has also played a major role in the organization of international scientific conferences, serving as Co-Chairperson and scientific leader of numerous events in Europe and abroad on topics such as multiaxial fatigue, crack propagation, additive manufacturing, and structural integrity, with conferences scheduled under her leadership through 2030.
Her scientific excellence has been widely recognized. Several of her papers have ranked among the most cited articles in leading journals, and she has coordinated award-winning research groups. She has been repeatedly included in Stanford University’s global ranking of the top 2% most influential scientists, both annually and over her entire career, reflecting sustained high scientific impact. She is the recipient of major international honors including the ESIS Fellowship, the Manson–Coffin IGF Medal, and the Heinz Neuber Medal, awarded for her fundamental contributions to fatigue modeling, fracture mechanics, and structural integrity of components with defects and stress concentrations.
Her authority in the field is further confirmed by her long-standing activity as a keynote and plenary speaker at major international conferences worldwide, from 2004 to 2025, across Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
