After obtaining his Laurea Magistrale (Master's degree) in Architecture in 2010 from the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, Bernardino worked as an architectural engineer on various research-driven projects, such as gridshell.it, where he was responsible for the structural design of a series of prototypes, including ReSonant String Shell, a timber acoustic shell for outdoor chamber music concerts. He was also involved in a joint research collaboration between the department of Construction and Mathematical Methods in Architecture (University of Naples Federico II) and the department of Civil Engineering and Architecture (University of Chieti-Pescara G. D’Annunzio, Italy) where he carried out theoretical and laboratory test-based investigations on a novel lightweight cold-formed steel beam. In October 2012, he joined the School of Engineering and the Built Environment of Edinburgh Napier University, as a PhD candidate, to develop computer-aided methods for the design of free-form grid-shell structural systems.
Bernardino's research interests lie in the general realm of design, analysis and fabrication of sustainable buildings and structures with focus on Computational Structural Design and Optimisation.