Maria Luísa Braga Farinha is a civil engineer working as a research officer at the Concrete Dams Department at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), in Lisbon , Portugal. She obtained her MsC degree in Structural Engineering in 2000 and her PhD in Civil Engineering in 2010, both from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon. She has been working in the field of dam engineering for the past 32 years. Her area of specialisation is the hydromechanical behaviour of concrete dam foundations and she has been working and carrying out her research in the safety evaluation of concrete dams. She has been involved in the development of in situ tests to complement the usual monitoring data of concrete dam foundations and in the application of finite element and distinct element numerical models for analysis of various rock mechanics problems associated with dam foundation jointed rock masses. She is the author and co-author of more than 100 publications (papers, communications, book chapters and scientific reports) on the analysis of the behaviour and safety assessment of concrete dams. She is a member of the Portuguese Engineering Society, of the International Society for Rock Mechanics and of the Portuguese Geotechnical Society. She contributes on a regular basis as a reviewer for several international and Portuguese scientific journals and in the organization of scientific conferences.