After more than 11 year of experience as tunneling engineer in a major international tunnel engineering niche company, Elena Chiriotti has joined SYSTRA in 2007, initially in the position of Head of the Tunneling and Earthworks Team, and more recently as Director of the Tunneling and Underground Works Department (more than 60 people). She is also Group Leader in charge of the Tunnel Product.

After an engineering degree in Civil Engineering (Geotechnics and Hydraulics) and a Ph.D. in Rock Mechanics, she has worked for the design and/or supervision of various tunneling projects around the world, including railway, metro and road tunnels.

The experience collected over more than 20 years of professional life include : risk assessment and risk management; design and construction follow-up of underground works, in particular mechanized tunneling and conventional tunneling works in difficult conditions and urban areas; construction methods; tunnel safety; quantitative assessment of tunneling-induced effects; assessment of risk of damage; ground treatment and reinforcement of existing structures; design of monitoring systems and data interpretation; numerical modelling.

Recent projects on which Mrs. Chiriotti has worked include: Hanoi metro; Cairo metro; Bucharest Metro Line 5; Tbilisi Metro; Copenhagen metro (Cityringen); Makkah Metro; Greater Paris Metro Line; the validation studies of the railway tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar, currently the most challenging tunnel project planned in the world.