ProfessorLaura Mainini

Professor Laura Mainini holds the Chair in Aerospace Computational Design at the Department of Aeronautics and is Associate Director of the Brahmal Vasudevan Institute for Sustainable Aviation, where she is responsible for sealing Industry engagement and collaborations, deputising for the Director and supporting the Institute’s vision and strategy. Before joining Imperial College, Dr. Mainini was Chief Technologist at Collins Aerospace, RTX Corporation, where she led programs on multidisciplinary and AI-enhanced modelling, design, and integration of aerospace systems. Dr. Mainini has professional experience in industry and academia across Europe, the United States and Singapore. Her academic career comprises appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Politecnico di Torino and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. 

Prof. Mainini pioneers solutions for the sustainable development of air transportation and space exploration, with focus on advanced computational and mathematical methods that permit to safely unlock novel designs. At Imperial, Prof Mainini has established the MaininiLaB – ASTRID2, a multidisciplinary and diverse research group that focuses on the development of advanced scientific computing for high-stakes decisions and design for a sustainable and equitable future of aerospace. Her research includes acknowledged contributions in realtime data-to-decision, digital engineering, scientific machine learning and multidisciplinary optimization for design, manufacturing, health monitoring and dynamic reconfigurable mission planning of complex engineering systems, structures and vehicles. Among those, computational frameworks for physics-based machine learning and data assimilation, best-in-class multifidelity methods for active learning and optimization, and first-in-kind bypass schemes for real-time resource-constrained and scalable digital twins for safety-critical decisions have been broadly adopted with multidomain impact beyond aerospace applications. In addition, in pursuit of her interest in space exploration, Dr. Mainini has been establishing and coordinating international collaborations which led to internationally awarded concepts for human exploration and settlement on Mars; also, she was among the select chosen to enter the highly competitive 2021-22 ESA astronaut selection process.

Prof. Mainini is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). She serves with leadership roles on the AIAA Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Technical Committee, the AIAA Digital Engineering Integration and Outreach Committee and a number of international task groups. Prof. Mainini is frequently invited for lectures, seminars, keynotes, panels as an acknowledged expert in multidisciplinary design optimization; aerospace computational and AI-enhanced design; scientific machine learning, multifidelity and physics aware active learning; digital twins and digital engineering; sustainable aviation and aerospace futures. Over the last years she has accepted invites to speak at more than 60 international events. Dr. Mainini earned her BSc, MSc. and PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Politecnico di Torino; she received a Fulbright grant to conduct research at MIT during her doctoral studies. In addition, she obtained a MSc. in Aeronautical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and graduated from the multidisciplinary international honour programme of the Alta Scuola Politecnica with focus on management of innovation.