Chiara Colombo is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She obtained her PhD in Mechanical Systems Engineering and her degree in Mechanical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. She has been responsible for a research unit within the project PRIN-COSMEC on the study of composite metallization. She received the Young Researcher Award from the Italian Group of Fracture and the Junior Prize from the Italian Association for Stress Analysis. Her main research topics are in the mechanical design field, focusing on the experimental and numerical modelling of hydrogen embrittlement in steels, and on the thermographic technique for studying stress and damage in homogeneous and composite materials.