Team

Our Team

Alex Zanotti

He is Associate Professor of Fluid Dynamics at Politecnico di Milano and is in charge of the chair of Experimental Fluid Dynamics course. He is the Scientific Coordinator of the Experimental Aerodynamics Laboratory of the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of Politecnico di Milano and Deputy Head of the Scientific Council of the Politecnico di Milano Wind Tunnel. He obtained the M.Sc degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2006 and the Ph.D in Rotary Wing Aircrafts in 2012 from Politecnico di Milano. His main research involves aerodynamics and aeroacoustics investigation of innovative Urban Air Mobility eVTOL aircraft. He was involved as Task leader in several EU funded projects. He was Scientific Coordinator of the mid-fidelity aerodynamic solver DUST.

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 completing a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and he holds a Master’s degree from the same institution. His field of interest is rotary-wing aerodynamics, in particular blade-vortex interaction and rotor-wake interaction for next-generation aircraft. He has conducted extensive wind-tunnel test campaigns, including Mach-scaled testing on compound configurations. 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

Previous Members

Davide Montagnani, co-creator
Matteo Tugnoli, co-creator