About Us

Fernando Sansò is a full professor at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DICA).
He received his degree with honours in Physics from the University of Milan in 1967.

In 1969 he was assistant at the Institute of Topography of the Politecnico di Milano and then teacher of Surveying at the Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano from 1976 to 1981. He was member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Society of Surveying and Photogrammetry and director of the Institute of Surveying, Photogrammetry and Geophysics of the Politecnico di Milano from 1982 to 1992. In 1989 he became member of the National Geophysical Council; in 1990 he was chair of the international project GEOMED, for the determination of the geoid in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1992 he established the International Geoid Service and became its President. In 1995 he was elected 1st Vice-President of the International Association of Geodesy and became Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano, in Como. In 2000 he became Editor of the Geophysical Journal International. He was organizer of a series of International Schools of Theoretical Geodesy, of International Schools for the geoid and of a series of International Symposia (Hotine-Marussi) on Theoretical Geodesy.

He has been President for about 10 years of the course of study in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of the new International Master of Science in Environmental and Geomatic Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano at the Como Campus. He is Chairman of the Ph.D. in Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano, full professor of Geodesy and President of the International Geoid Service.

He received the Bomford Prize for Geodesy in 1979, the Feltrinelli Award for Astronomy, Geodesy, Geophysics and Applications in 1986, a Doctor Scientiarum h.c. degree in Geodetic Science at the University of Copenhagen in 2002, a Doctor Scientiarum h.c. degree in Geodesy at the University of Thessaloniki in 2008 and a Doctor Scientiarum h.c. in Geodesy at the University of Stuttgart in 2009. He is corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei from 1986, he was President of the International Association of Geodesy from 1999 to 2003, now Honorary IAG President, he is also fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (UK) from 2004 and from 2007 is full Member of the Accademia dei Lincei. Nominated by CNR as Italian delegate to the IAG (International Association of Geodesy) in 2011. In the year 2016 he is awarded the title of “Professor Emeritus” of Politecnico di Milano.

From 2008 he is Editor in Chief of the new Bulletin of Geodesy and Geomatics and Member of the Editorial Board of the Rendiconti Lincei: Scienze Fisiche e Naturali. He is author and co-author of about 350 works, articles and conference reports half of which at an international standard. He is also Editor of 4 books of Lecture Notes and several volumes of the Proceedings of IAG Symposia with Springer-Verlag.

Fernando Sansò CV.

Stefano Caldera graduated in 2006 in Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. In 2010 he received his PhD in Geomatics and Infrastructures (with honours).

The main research activity concerns GNSS data treatment for high precision applications, with a focus on GNSS permanent station networks for positioning services (adjustment and quality) and deformation monitoring, and networks relating to global and cartographic reference systems.
Author and co-author of publications in international peer-reviewed journals since 2006. He has participated in national and international conferences with oral presentations both as a speaker and with posters.

In 2010 he was awarded with the Autec prize for the best Doctoral thesis underSSD ICAR06 (Topography and Cartography). Since academic year 2003/04 he has been held exercises and labs at Politecnico di Milano, among them Geodetic Monitoring, Topography, Surveying and Positioning; he partecipated as teacher in EasyLog and Hi-TEC Research project for Politecnico di Milano, and also in GPS School for Leica Geosystems Italia. He is supervisor, co-supervisor and tutor of both Bachelor and Master Degree thesis at Politecnico di Milano Environmental Engineering Department.

GReD CEO from May 2015 to February 2020.

Martina Capponi got her Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering in 2014 and her Ph.D. in Transportation and Infrastructure at Università di Roma La Sapienza. Her Ph.D. thesis was titled “Very Improved KINematic Gravimetry: a new approach to aerogravimetry”.

From 2014 to early 2019, during her Ph.D. studies, she was also a research fellow at Politecnico di Milano, where her work was mainly focused on potential field methods and the development of processing software for geophysical exploration applications. Within this period she held exercise lectures and laboratories at Politecnico di Milano for courses of the Bachelor and Master Degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Topography, Cartography, Positioning and Location Based Serveces).

Since 2014 she attended various international and national conferences as a speaker and she is author and co-author of publications peer-reviewed at international level.

In GReD her principal research activities regard the development of software for processing and interpreting the Earth’s gravity field in the framework of oil&gas exploration applications.

Martina Capponi’s pages on:

• Google Scholar
• ResearchGate
• LinkedIn

Osmari Aponte is a Geophysical Engineer graduated from Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela (2017). Her Bachelor’s thesis, “Characterization of Carbonates by Seismic Attributes and Well Data: Campo Merced, Mexico,” allowed her to work on reservoir characterization through seismic attributes and petrophysical analysis. She then worked as a geophysics analyst in Caracas, specializing in oil and gas reservoir characterization.

She was awarded in 2020 an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, she completed a Master’s degree in Marine Environment and Resources (MER+) in 2022. Throughout this program, she had the opportunity to enrich her academic experience at the Université de Bordeaux (UBx), Universidad del País Vasco (EHU/UPV), and Université de Liège (ULiège). Her Master’s thesis, “Evaluation of the Influence of Submarine Outflows of Waste Water Treatment Plants on Posidonia oceanica meadows in the Balearic Islands,” showcased her dedication to environmental research.

She is a doctoral candidate at GReD and Politecnico di Milano. Her specific research project aims to develop innovative solutions by creating an automated software tool for analyzing ground deformation time series obtained from Galileo-enabled low-cost GNSS receivers in conjunction with DInSAR monitoring and ground modeling.

Lorenzo Serafini got a Master Degree in Astrophysics at Università degli Studi di Firenze with a thesis named “Acceleration of the ECHO code and study on Relativistic Magneto-hydrodinamic Turbulence”, a work that made him develop an interest in scientific programming and High Performance Computing architecture.
He is part of GReD since February 2025, where he works on the development of software for processing and interpreting the Earth’s gravity field with the aim of exploration.