Opening Day and Week 1

The Master’s kicked-off with a warm, welcoming and informative opening ceremony. The ceremony was graced by the director for lifelong learning of PoliTo. Prof Daniele Peila, the director of the course, welcomed all the students to the university and gave a brief of the course highlighting his expectations. There we were, from diverse backgrounds and different countries but with gleaming energies bucking up for the year ahead. It is fun and challenging to be back to the classroom after a while for many of us.

Listen to the director and students here about the session

The lecture on general aspects of tunnelling and guidelines for underground structures design marked the beginning of the course and was a high-on-energy and filled with examples of tunnelling projects from around the world. This is what Prof Peila brings to you, always!! We were advised to be open in our approach always while practicing. The week was then aimed to introduce the geological and geophysical aspects of tunnelling from investigations to the design considerations to the risk aspects induced by geology while tunnelling. While Dr. Soldo, the technical director from Geodata asked us to have a holistic and open approach, he covered geoengineering design coupled with interesting uncertainty concepts and quoting many standards and some interesting case studies. Prof Sambuelli, a well-known expert in geophysical surveys and a NatGeo geologist, covered an array of investigation methods, shared with us a ton of literature for our future reference. Prof Russo started from the basics of hydrogeology, also explaining its relevance by quoting the alarming differences in the contents of simple bottled water, ending with a thoughtful quote ‘don’t avoid water, manage it’.