Dal Zillo teaches at NTU in Singapore
The Italian geophysicist Luca Dal Zilio, originally from Treviso and currently Assistant Professor at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, has been selected by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) for the prestigious Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award 2026. The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is the largest European organization for Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences.
The primary goal of his work is to advance the fundamental understanding of earthquakes to inform global seismic risk assessment. Professor Dal Zilio’s work combines physics-based numerical models, high-performance computing and data analysis to investigate earthquake triggering and rupture propagation along faults.
The announcement coincides with the publication of his latest study in the scientific journal Science, which focuses on the 2025 Myanmar earthquake. The 2025 Sagaing Earthquake in Myanmar was a catastrophic event of magnitude 7.7, which caused extensive damage across the country and surrounding regions. The death toll was tragic, officially exceeding 3,000 dead and 4,500 injured, with the devastation compounded by the complex internal logistical and political situation.
The new study published in Science reconstructs the rupture of the 2025 Myanmar earthquake along the Sagaing Fault in three dimensions, using satellite observations, geodetic measurements and numerical simulations. The analysis indicates that parts of the rupture propagated at supershear speeds, which is faster than the shear wave speed of the surrounding crust. Supershear ruptures can concentrate shaking in specific directions, with important implications for predicting ground motion.
“During most earthquakes, the rupture travels at about three to four kilometers per second,” explains Dal Zilio, who directs the Computational Geophysics Lab at NTU’s Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) and the Asian School of the Environment (ASE). “In rare cases it can exceed the speed of shear waves – what we call supershear. Our results suggest that to anticipate where this might happen, we need to map and model the entire fault zone: its thickness, wave speeds and geometry can help trigger and sustain such extreme behavior.” The paper highlights, in particular, the role of a damage zone around two kilometers thick, which acted as a preferential path for ultra-fast rupture, offering a new perspective on how to assess seismic risk on similar faults around the world.
Dal Zilio studied Geophysics at the University of Padua and obtained his doctorate at ETH Zurich. Before moving to Singapore in 2024, he performed postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and ETH. His previous honors include the Prix Schläfli (2022) from the Swiss Academy of Sciences and the Jason Morgan Early Career Award (2023) from the American Geophysical Union (AGU).”
