Dr. Vasco Bernardo obtained his Master’s degree in 2014 in the Department of Civil Engineering at Nova University of Lisbon. Within the MSc thesis he investigated the seismic performance of footbridges through nonlinear dynamic analysis employing the Applied Element Method formulation; a pioneering modelling strategy in Portugal. From 2014 to 2018, he worked as a consultant and structural designer for various engineering projects in Europe and Africa. In 2018, Dr. Bernardo started his PhD studies in the scope of the InfraRisk doctoral programme – Analysis and Mitigation of Risks in Infrastructures – and developed his research work in the Department of Earthquake Engineering Structural Dynamics of the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), Lisbon. During his PhD, he focused on the seismic vulnerability and risk analysis of existing masonry structures, in the framework of probabilistic performance-based seismic assessment. He also developed the expeditious methods for the seismic safety assessment of existing Portuguese masonry buildings using reliability-based analysis, which are currently being applied by the technical engineering community.

His research interests focus on Structural Dynamics, Earthquake Engineering, Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Existing Structures and Risk Analysis. In October 2022, Dr. Bernardo joined the S4H team as a postdoctoral researcher. He will contribute to the field of Seismic Vulnerability and Risk Analysis of Existing Masonry Structures using micro and macro modeling numerical approaches in the scope of seismic assessment of masonry structures (WP4).