Early Career Spotlight: September 2026

Tell us about yourself:

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Padova, Italy. I grew up on the Venetian mainland, near Venice, where my father’s family is from, and I spent many of my childhood summers on Sant’Erasmo, the green island of the Venice Lagoon. Whether that had anything to do with what came later, I cannot really say, but water has always been part of the landscapes I feel most at home in.

I was originally trained as a civil engineer specializing in hydraulics and, after graduating, worked for a short time as a freelance engineer, including as a consultant for the High Adriatic Basin Water Authority. I then somehow found my way into Earth Sciences through a PhD at the University of Padova—and never really left. Along the way, I was a Visiting Scholar at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Padova and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice before returning to Padova as faculty.

Outside academia, I am also the very proud dad of a wonderful three-year-old daughter.

What is your research about?

My work sits at the interface between geomorphology, hydrology, and environmental fluid mechanics. Broadly, I try to understand how flowing water shapes landscapes, and how those evolving landscapes in turn influence the flow. I am particularly interested in the interactions among water, sediment, and vegetation in rivers, tidal channels, coastal wetlands, estuaries, and deltas.

I approach these questions from different angles, combining field observations, remote sensing, numerical modelling, and laboratory experiments. A recurring thread throughout much of my research is meandering: I am fascinated by the surprisingly complex processes hidden behind the beautiful, apparently simple patterns of sinuous rivers and tidal channels. I am interested in how these processes compare across very different environments—from tidal wetlands and deltas to drylands and cold regions—and how they respond to hydrological variability, vegetation changes, sea-level rise, and human interventions. More recently, my work has increasingly focused on coastal resilience, including how natural sedimentary processes and nature-based solutions might help wetlands and deltas adapt to climate change.

What excites you about your research?

I have always been fascinated by patterns shaped by nature, and that is probably why I keep being drawn back to meandering channels. There is something almost hypnotic about a river or tidal channel winding across a landscape: the pattern looks simple and somehow inevitable, but once you start asking why a bend has that particular shape, why it moves in one direction rather than another, or why similar patterns emerge in completely different environments, things become wonderfully complicated.

I also genuinely enjoy the detective work behind research. I can spend far too much time looking at maps, satellite images, graphs, or datasets, searching for patterns and trying to understand what they are telling us. There is a special satisfaction in suddenly seeing a relationship emerge from the data—or, even better, finding something that does not fit your expectations and forces you to rethink the problem. In a way, research allows me to reverse-engineer natural landscapes: starting from the patterns we observe and trying to uncover the rules and processes that created them.

What broader importance does your research have for society?

I do not think every question in geomorphology needs to have an immediate practical application—sometimes understanding how landscapes work is valuable in itself. But many of the landscapes I study are also places where natural dynamics and human decisions strongly interact, and where getting those interactions wrong can have long-lasting consequences.

A good example comes from the Venice Lagoon, where part of my recent research examines the trade-offs between protecting the city from flooding and maintaining the sedimentary and ecological processes that sustain the surrounding wetlands. In the nearby Po River Delta, I am involved in research exploring whether we can work with natural sedimentary processes and nature-based solutions to build land and increase resilience to relative sea-level rise and subsidence. I am also interested in how tidal-channel dynamics influence blue-carbon storage in coastal wetlands. Together, these projects ask a broader question that I find increasingly important: how can we protect people while allowing coastal landscapes to retain the natural processes they need to survive?

What inspired you to pursue a career in Earth Science?

To be completely honest, I more or less stumbled into Earth Science. I graduated in Civil Engineering with a thesis on river flood modelling, and at the time I had always imagined a very straightforward path: graduate, become an engineer, and get a “real job” (or so I thought, at least). I actually started doing some consulting work after graduation, but shortly afterwards I was offered the opportunity to begin a PhD in Earth Sciences on an industry-sponsored project. At the time, I barely even knew what a PhD was—my professors actually had to talk me through what doing one would involve!

The job market was still quite difficult after the economic crisis, and I did not have many other options on the table, so I thought I would give it a try. I probably also imagined that the connection with industry might eventually open some doors. Instead, I discovered that I genuinely enjoyed research: asking questions nobody quite knew the answer to, figuring out how to investigate them, and constantly learning new things. Looking back, I guess I had always been curious about how the world around us works; research simply gave that curiosity a method, a purpose, and much more room to grow. The more research I did, the more fun I had doing it, so I simply kept going. I was also extremely lucky to meet mentors and collaborators along the way who taught me how to ask better scientific questions, encouraged me to follow my curiosity, and made research a genuinely enjoyable experience.

What are your short and/or long-term goals in your EPSP journey?

In the short term, I am focused on continuing to build my research group at the University of Padova and on consolidating existing international collaborations while developing new ones, particularly across disciplinary boundaries. Of course, continuing to do good science and working toward tenure are also fairly high on the list! To make those ambitions possible, I am developing new research ideas and actively pursuing funding at both the national and European levels, with ERC funding being a major ambition.

In the longer term, what motivates me most is the idea of building a research environment where students and early-career researchers can develop their own scientific interests, pursue their goals, and enjoy the process of doing science. I have been fortunate to learn from mentors and collaborators who gave me opportunities and made research fun, and I would like to provide the same kind of environment for the people I work with. If, along the way, we can ask interesting questions, build strong collaborations, and keep having fun doing science, I would consider that a pretty successful journey.

Given unlimited funding and access to resources, what is your dream project that you would pursue?

My dream project would be to understand whether the geometry and dynamics of tidal channel networks can tell us something fundamental about the health and future of coastal wetlands. Could we look at the way a wetland is organized and infer how resilient it is, how it stores carbon, or whether it is approaching a critical transition?

With unlimited resources, I would explore this question across wetlands worldwide, from salt marshes to mangroves and tidal flats. The ultimate goal would be to uncover whether there are universal organizing principles behind these landscapes and use them to better predict their future and support more effective conservation and restoration.

What else do you do? Any hobbies or interests outside of work?

I have always been a very sporty person. I used to play football at a semi-professional level and have always been slightly obsessed with pretty much any kind of sport, whether playing or watching it. After tearing my ACL twice, football is no longer a great idea, but I still enjoy running, tennis, padel, and occasionally skiing—although my knees are usually less enthusiastic than I am. I am also a fan of racing simulators and still have a full setup at home. Even if finding time to use it has become increasingly difficult, I can still squeeze in a rally-driving session every once in a while!

More generally, I love being outdoors, whether that means taking my daughter to the playground, walking our dog, going for a bike ride or hike with the family, or simply taking care of the garden and mowing the lawn. At home, I enjoy cooking—although I would not claim to be particularly good at it—reading popular science books, sports biographies, and historical non-fiction, doing jigsaw puzzles, and building LEGO.

Visit Alivse's website: 

https://alvitello.weebly.com/