Enrico Milanese

Ciao! I’m Enrico – a scientist who has fun studying friction and experimenting with creative ways to communicate science.

Science
I’m interested in frictional processes and in particular in the effects of surface roughness and wear particles, and how the surrounding bodies damage during friction. I’m currently investigating the role of such phenomena in earthquakes, studying the fractures that appeared during the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake in California, USA. I also simulate the evolution of earthquake cycles over millions of years to understand what is the effect of gouge – the rock wear that forms along a fault during sliding.

Before these projects, I investigated surface roughness evolution in adhesive wear processes at the nanoscale, using unconventional simulations that can capture loose wear debris formation. Wear debris is indeed necessary to reach the kind of surface morphology that we find on many surfaces, faults too.

Scicomm and Sciart
I enjoy exploring visual ways to communicate science and the human experience. I am the co-founder of SciFilmIt, an association that organize science filmmaking hackathons offering a safe space for scientists and artists to come together and tell science stories that resonates with the audience. ​I have co-organized more than 10 scicomm events for over 200 scientists and artists and over 50 kids in Switzerland. I have also been teaching science communication to graduate students at EPFL (Switzerland) and participated in different scicomm activities: Pint of Science, Symbiosis at Imagine Science Film Festival, etc. A full list is in my CV.