Fabio Fossati, outstanding researcher and ITC member of the ORC, passed away

Last week Fabio Fossati, a long standing member of the International Technical Commitee of the Offshore Racing Congress, has suddenly passed away after losing his battle with lung cancer. With his extensive research work in the Wind Tunnel facility at Milan Polytechnic University, he gave tremendous contributions to fluid-dynamics applied to sailing yacht design, as well as to the ORC.
As a full professor with a PhD in Applied Mechanics and a lecturer at the Master in Naval and Nautical Design program at Milan Polytechnic and at the University of Genoa, Fabio Fossati carried out intensive research in the field of numerical and experimental fluid-dynamics as applied to the field of sailing yacht design. He was the scientific research coordinator for the activities of Team Prada Challenge for the 2003 America’s Cup, of Team Luna Rossa Challenge for the 2007 America’s Cup and for the BMW/Oracle Racing Challenge for the 2010 America’s Cup. This work helped elevate the Wind Tunnel facility he created at Milan into being recognised as a worldwide centre of research excellence.
Among his numerous scientific publications, his book “Aero-Hydrodynamics and the Performance of Sailing Yachts: The Science Behind Sailboats and Their Design” is a worldwide reference text for sailing yachts theory.
He initiated a myriad of important projects, that will certainly have contributions well past his interrupted life. One in particular was getting Polytechnic support in 2012 for the building of Fabio’s original idea of the “Barca Laboratorio,” a fully instrumented boat for full scale testing of a sailing yacht – this project shows great promise, and has still to become fully operational. His innovative and progressive ideas will be certainly brought forward with passion and thankfulness by his collaborators.