Chiara Colombo is a mechanical engineer, she got her PhD in Mechanical Systems Engineering in 2009, deepening her study at Michigan State University for a period. Then, she was a research fellow in 2009-2010, and became Assistant Professor in 2011. At present, she is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, Italy, since 2018.
She received the 2007 Young Researcher Award from IGF (Italian Group of Fracture) and the 2009 Junior Prize from AIAS (Italian Association for Stress Analysis).
Her main research topics are in the mechanical design field both from the experimental and the numerical viewpoints, in the following topics: study of the damage initiation, propagation and fatigue behaviour of composite materials; development of photoelastic and thermographic techniques for the analysis of static and fatigue loads in homogeneous materials and composites; experimental analysis and numerical modelling of hydrogen embrittlement in steels; testing of prosthetic devices and numerical modelling of bone tissue. Part of these activities is in collaboration with industries and European universities.
At present she is responsible for a research unit within the project COSMEC -Cold Spray of Metal to Composite, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) in the call PRIN.
Her teaching activity is in the field of Machine Design, with courses for the Bachelor of Mechanical and Energy Engineering. In 2013 she had the course Machine Design at Tongji University of Shanghai.