Ignasi de Pouplana Sardà is a Civil Engineer by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) since 2014. He is also a Master in Structural & Construction Engineering and a Ph.D. in Structural Analysis by the same university since 2015 and 2018, respectively.

His research career started in 2012 at the International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE) when, in the context of the Civil Engineering bachelor thesis, he worked on the implementation and validation of a new code of the Discrete Element Method (DEM). In 2014 he started working on continuum damage mechanics in the field of the Finite Element Method (FEM), and developed a new approach for the failure analysis of quasi-brittle materials by combining non-local damage models with adaptive mesh refinement techniques.

He developed the Ph.D. with the research focused on fluid-structure interaction in porous and fractured media. Topics of major interest included: stable analysis of the fluid flux in porous media, fracture of the solid matrix driven by the fluid pressure, and adaptivity of the mesh to propagate fractures in the porous domain by using non-local damage models along with quasi-zero-thickness interface elements. During the PhD, Ignasi went to Tsinghua University, Beijing, on a three month secondment to work with a research group expert on hydraulic fracturing.

As a postdoctoral researcher of CIMNE, he participated in various research projects and contracts with industry applied to different engineering problems, e.g. monitoring of stresses during the construction process of concrete arch dams, optimization of drill bit geometries for Particle Impact Drilling (PID) technology, prediction of the final stress state of metallic pieces during casting processes, quantification of sand production in well completions, and prediction of NO2 concentration in urban areas, to name a few.

Ignasi is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Strength of Materials and Structural Engineering (RMEE) in UPC, participating in several courses related to structural analysis and strength of materials in the Barcelona East School of Engineering (EEBE). He is also affiliated to CIMNE as an assistant research professor.
His research is now focused on the development of new numerical methods for the simulation of safe CO2 injection processes in saline aquifers. This topic is totally aligned with the climate, energy and mobility thematic priority as its final goal is to increase the general understanding and facilitate the adoption of climate change mitigation strategies such as CO2 sequestration and Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).
In order to properly advance in such research, Ignasi obtained in 2022 funds from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) to work, as one of the two principal investigators, on the research project “SECCO2: Open-source software for the digitalization of the CO2 storage process”.

Such an experience has been accompanied by the supervision of 2 PhD theses, 1 recognized period of six years of research and the publication of 15 JCR articles.