Dr. Vlad-Alexandru Silvestru

Dr. Vlad Silvestru holds the position of a post-doctoral research assistant at the Chair of Steel and Composite Structures at ETH Zurich since February 2020.

After graduating from high school in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), he studied civil engineering at Graz University of Technology (Austria) from 2005 to 2012. Parallel to his studies he worked as a technical draughtsman in smaller architectural offices. After his studies, he worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of Building Construction at Graz University of Technology, where his activities covered topics from the fields of structural glass and façade engineering. In 2018, Vlad Silvestru received his PhD degree from Graz University of Technology for his dissertation "Composite Structural Glazing Systems", supervised by Dr. Oliver Englhardt (formerly professor at Graz University of Technology) and Prof. Jens Schneider (TU Darmstadt).

During his time as a research and teaching assistant at Graz University of Technology, Vlad Silvestru worked with renowned engineering offices and industry representatives (including Waagner-Biro Stahlbau AG and Sika Services AG) in the context of research projects (e.g. FFG-Bridge project "Glass Building Skins") and funding applications. In addition, he has published articles in scientific journals on current topics in structural glass and has given lectures at international conferences. From 2018 to the beginning of 2020, Vlad Silvestru worked as a facade engineer and project manager for Dr. Lüchinger+Meyer Bauingenieure AG in Zurich.

At the Chair of Steel and Composite Structures, Vlad Silvestru has the task of initiating research in the areas of structural glass and façade engineering and at the same time introducing these topics into teaching. His current research interests are the use of shape memory alloys in transparent facades, the consideration of thermally induced stresses in the design of glazing and glass-GFRP facade elements with composite load-bearing behaviour.