Dr. Davide Donati

What got you interested in Earth Sciences?
This is an interesting question. I think it started when I still was a teenager, while watching a play on TV. It was about the events that led to the occurrence of the Vajont Slide, one of the most (in)famous man-made tragedies in Italian history, and probably well beyond that. Perhaps it was the ability of the actor, or maybe because of the location (the “theatre” was right on the deposit of the landslide), it really hit me in the stomach. I wanted to know more, to understand how it happened, and why. Little did I knew, back then, that this play triggered a series of events that brought me first to study Earth Sciences in the University of Bologna (in Italy), and then to this side of the world to study landslides at SFU

Why did you choose SFU EASC?
First, I should thank one of my former professors in Italy – she really pushed me in the right direction. My first time at SFU I was a visiting graduate student in 2011. I arrived here through the GeoNatHaz program (a Canada-EU collaboration), and on that occasion I met the professor that would later became my Senior Supervisor, Prof. Doug Stead. A few years later when I decided to start my PhD, I had no doubt as to what to do, and where. I knew already that the focus of Doug’s research group included landslides, and their investigation with a set of tool and instruments that in this field I would not hesitate to call “cutting-edge”: laser scanners, UAVs, infrared and hyperspectral cameras. And also a lot of software for numerical modelling, which allowed me to study landslides by trying to “reproduce” them using high-end PCs. Getting my hands “dirty” using all these things has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I consider myself extremely lucky for having had this opportunity.