I have graduated from Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, Poland, made my PhD at Durham University, UK (2008) and shortly afterwards became a Research Associate at the University of Newcastle in Australia, where I stayed till July 2014. On August the 1st I became Assistant Professor in geotechnical engineering at Aalto University.

In my research life, numerical methods and constitutive modelling have always been present. In my Master degree, I was investigating how non-uniform soil layers leading to differential settlements influence forces in the concrete frame structures. Later on I was working on deformations of concrete pavements under cyclic loading.

In Durham, thanks to my Marie-Curie fellowship, I have been introduced to the best European researchers who quickly became my role-models. They were applying unsaturated soil mechanics to subjects like nuclear waste storage, dams and oil extraction and soon I got hooked.

With my PhD degree my first journal papers, co-authored by Domenico Gallipoli, came out. They investigate stress integration of constitutive model for unsaturated soils - the Barcelona Basic Model. After research visits in Trento and in Innsbruck I moved to Newcastle, Australia, hoping to work with Professor Scott Sloan, the world authority on stress integration. Indeed, I soon started working with Scott which led to more papers investigating both stress integration and constitutive modelling of unsaturated soils.

While in Newcastle, I have been tasked with investigation of a new numerical method - the material point method (MPM). The established methods like finite element or boundary element method are ill-suited for calculations where very large deformations are present. MPM, though still assuming continuum description of materials, is able to proceed with computations further into post failure states. That allows for simulation of problems like installation of piles/anchors, CPT tests and problems involving collapses of piles of granular materials. Modelling of complex processes like dynamic compaction or simulation of landslides and avalanches is also possible.

Additionally I am in charge of thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical modelling of bentonite and unsaturated soils. The FE code for that purpose has been created almost from scratch in our group.

In my group, the material point method is the main subject of 3 PhD students (one of whom is jointly supervised) and two postdoctoral researchers.

I am preparing research proposals related to THMC modelling of unsaturated soils, as well material point method regularly. I am also open for collaboration related to those, as well as, for instance, computational geomechanics, modelling of granular materials and subjects related to the application of numerical methods in practice.