Ortega Heras, Javier

Javier Ortega is an architect from the Polytechnic School of Madrid (Spain) with a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Minho (Portugal). He is currently a ComFuturo Fellow at the ITEFI, working on developing novel non-destructive in-situ inspection systems (equipment and methods) for the material, geometrical and mechanical characterization of historical masonry elements, particularly focusing on obtaining an accurate 3D digital reconstruction of the interior of masonry elements. In 2022 and 2023, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at ITEFI and, between 2018 and 2021, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minho. His research has focused on the structural diagnosis of the built heritage, detailed and large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment, and, more recently, on the development of new technologies for the non-destructive evaluation and tomographic imaging the interior of historical construction elements. He has participated in ten research projects in the field of conservation of heritage structures, leading four of them: the ComFuturo project 'S-RAY', the EU-funded projects 'Heritage Within' and 'DocumeNDT', and the Portuguese research project 'INHAVIT'. He is co-founder and associate of FENEC, a consulting engineering association providing non-destructive testing and specialized structural analysis services for the built heritage. He has over nine years of professional and academic experience in the field of conservation of historical and vernacular structures, with work on more than twenty monuments throughout the world, including several UNESCO World Heritage sites.