John Montesano

John Montesano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and the Director of the Composites Research Group (CRG). His expertise lies in the field of mechanics of fiber-reinforced composite materials and structures, with specific focus on advanced manufacturing, multi-scale material constitutive characterization and modeling, non-destructive testing, damage mechanics and failure, fatigue and long-term durability, impact and crashworthiness, and computational simulation.

Prior to joining Waterloo, Professor Montesano was an NSERC Postdoctoral Researcher in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Toronto, where he developed multi-scale computational models for predicting failure of lightweight composite materials and structures. He received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering at Ryerson University in 2012, where he studied the long-term durability of aerospace grade composite materials at elevated temperatures. In addition, he has more than five years of industrial experience working as a mechanical designer and structural analyst in the aerospace sector.