image: PIervincenzo Rizzo in his lab at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering
Credit: Tom Altany (the University of Pittsburgh)
SPIE, the international optics and photonics society, has named the University of Pittsburgh’s Piervincenzo Rizzo the recipient of the 2027 Nondestructive Evaluation Lifetime Achievement Award. The annual award honors senior scholars whose research and engagement with the society have advanced the field.
SPIE will recognize Rizzo, professor of civil engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering, at its 2027 Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation meeting in Vancouver, Canada, on March 22–25, 2027, where he will deliver a plenary address.
Since moving to the United States from Palermo, Italy, in 2000 to pursue a master’s degree, Rizzo has dedicated his academic career to nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM). These fields use sensing technology to identify potential problems inside structures and materials without causing further damage.
“Think about when you have an x-ray of your teeth to spot cavities or an MRI to find something serious in the brain or body,” Rizzo said. “We do the same thing, typically using less expensive technologies on structures. We use non-invasive technologies to identify possible defects that are invisible to the human eye.”
Rizzo, who came to Pitt in 2006, has conducted extensive research on the many bridges across Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania, including a 2020–2023 project with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to monitor ten bridges across the state. The bridges had been equipped with sensing systems, and Rizzo and his team evaluated and reported on the data, the sensors, and the structures themselves.
“It was a great opportunity to investigate real structures across the state,” Rizzo said. “My students and I created models to understand how these bridges behave over time under conditions such as rush hour and the different seasons and validated these models using the readings from the sensors installed on the bridges.”
Over the last 20 years, Rizzo has also investigated ways to improve railway safety, most recently receiving a $234,017 grant from the Federal Railroad Administration for his project “AI-Driven Trackside System for Measuring and Monitoring Longitudinal Stress and Rail Neutral Temperature.” He is creating technology that can capture vibration data on continuously welded rails to determine a rail’s neutral temperature – the temperature at which a rail carries no thermal stress – and monitor for stress. The technology seeks to keep trains, passengers, and communities safer.
In addition to improving how infrastructure is monitored and understood, Rizzo has expanded his work to include the human eye. With a $403,633 award from the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, Rizzo and his team are currently developing a new glaucoma test. Applying principles that guide their research evaluating built structures, they are creating a tonometer, a portable device used to measure the pressure inside the eyes, that people can use at home.
An active member of SPIE, Rizzo has contributed to that society by attending SPIE NDE Conferences regularly. “I have served as a session chair, a chair organizer, and a program organizer,” he said. “In the past 20 years, I’ve probably missed only three or four conferences.” Rizzo is an active conference organizer as well. He is organizing two conferences in Italy, to be held in June and July 2027, one on SHM and one on experimental mechanics, respectively.
At Pitt, he co-directs the Infrastructure Sensing for Intelligent Transportation and Energy Systems Consortium (INSITES) and directs his Laboratory for Nondestructive Evaluation and Structural Health Monitoring Studies. He also serves as the managing editor for Structural Health Monitoring, an International Journal and is the associate editor of Sensors, an MDPI journal.
“As a first-generation college student and first-generation immigrant, it’s been a long and rewarding journey,” Rizzo said. “It’s an incredible honor to receive SPIE’s Lifetime Achievement Award. When I first came to the U.S. to study, I was introduced to this important research that I have been doing ever since. I didn’t choose NDE; it chose me.”