Dr Elena Vagnoni is currently the head of the research projects group at EPFL Technology Platform for Hydraulic Machines and lecturer for the EPFL Mechanical Engineering Section. Her research interests focus on the experimental investigation, numerical simulation and predictive modelling of the hydraulic machines behaviour to improve the hydroelectric units’ exploitation in conventional and unconventional hydropower schemes. She graduated with honours in Mechanical Engineering from the Politecnico of Milan (Italy) in 2013, and she obtained her PhD in Mechanics at EPFL in 2018. Before her current position, she was a research assistant fellow at Johns Hopkins University (US), a postdoctoral researcher at EPFL, and a SNSF-fellow guest scientist at NTNU (Norway). She is the Swiss expert for the Annex IX of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Hydropower Technology Cooperation Programme and Vice-Coordinator of the European Energy Research Association (EERA) joint program Hydropower.