DrStavroula Kontoe

Professor Kontoe is a Visiting Professor of the Geotechnics section, specialising in the development and application of numerical methods to study the performance of geotechnical structures under static, dynamic and seismic loading.

She received her Diploma degree in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 2001. She continued her studies at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College, where she obtained an MSc in Soil Mechanics and Engineering Seismology in 2002 and a PhD in Computational Geomechanics in 2006. Following the completion of her studies she worked as a Lecturer (2006-2014), Senior Lecturer (2014-2019) and Reader in Soil Dynamics (2019-2022) at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College London. She repatriated to her hometown in 2022, at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Patras where she is Professor in Computational Geomechanics.

Prof. Kontoe’s research experience includes projects on the seismic performance of tunnels, retaining structures and dams, on site response analysis and its incorporation in seismic hazard studies, topographic effects on seismic ground motion, modelling vibrations induced by pile driving and slope stability in strain softening materials. More recent activities also include research on the axial and lateral response of piles supporting offshore wind-turbines.

Prof. Kontoe is co-editor for Computers and Geotechnics, Associate Editor of the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering and serves on the editorial board of Soil Dynamics & Earthquake Engineering. She has also served at the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Geotechnique.