Maria Pregnolato

Maria Pregnolato is a Lecturer in Civil Engineering and EPSRC Research Fellow at the University of Bristol's Faculty of Engineering, specializing in flood resilience of transportation infrastructure. Her work bridges civil engineering and climate risk assessment to enhance urban infrastructure robustness.

Her research focuses on:

• Impact of flooding on road networks and bridges
• Integrated flood-transport modeling
• Resilience of national transport networks to climate extremes
• Risk assessment methodologies for infrastructure failure

She leads the EPSRC-funded project "Resilience of National Transport Networks to Flood-induced Bridge Failures" (2018-2021), developing models to predict bridge vulnerability during extreme weather. Previously at Newcastle University, she created foundational flood-transport frameworks now applied in national infrastructure planning.

Her recognition includes the Italy Made Me Award 2019 from the Italian Embassy in London for exceptional contributions to UK academia. She has contributed to Elsevier's "Climate Extremes and Their Implications for Impact and Risk Assessment" (2019) and co-authored influential public discourse via The Conversation blog on climate threats to aging bridges.

Maria actively engages with national research initiatives including UKCRIC's "All Hands" collaboration forum and DAFNI's virtual roadshow, working with international teams to implement data-driven infrastructure solutions. Her EPSRC fellowship demonstrates significant grant acquisition in climate adaptation research.