Cino Viggiani has about 25 years of research experience in geomechanics. He has been working in Laboratoire 3SR in the research team "GéoMécanique", which currently includes about 20 permanent faculty members and 30 PhD students and post-doc. Professor at Université Grenoble Alpes, he was offered a few visiting professor positions at a number of universities: Georgia Tech in the USA, the University of Kumamoto in Japan, the University of Sydney in Australia, the University of Edinburgh in the UK, and the University of Napoli in Italy.

Cino's research involves experimental investigations as well as theoretical and numerical modeling of the behavior of geomaterials, including localized failure and hydro-mechanical coupling. Applications are principally in geoenvironmental, petroleum, and civil engineering. Recent research has been mostly focused on advanced experiments; Cino has been developing and using quite a range of innovative soil and rock testing apparatus and experimental techniques – in particular, Digital Image Correlation and x-ray tomography.

Cino has served in various National and International Research Boards, including the Technical Committee TC105 “Geo-Mechanics from Micro to Macro” of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. His expertise has been called upon by the French Ministry for Research and Innovation and the Mechanics and Engineering Section of the French National Council of University, to name a few.

Since October 2017 he is the president of the European Association ALERT-Geomaterials.

In 2007 he created and has since directed the international masters program in Geomechanics, Civil Engineering and Risks in Grenoble (all courses are given in English – which is quite an achievement for a French university!). Since 2007-2008, more than 200 students have attended this masters program from more than thirty different countries.