Research Interests 

• Brain-Inspired Computing

• Neuro- and biomorphic engineering

• Decision Making

• Dynamical Systems

• Control Theory

I am broadly interested in the interaction between mathematics, biology (particularly neuroscience), and engineering (particularly control theory and neuromorphic engineering). The brain, its way of knowing and perceiving the world, and the ways in which biology seems to self-organize out of inert matter, always fascinated me. As a physicist, I consider mathematics the natural language through which to describe the various facets of the biological world. Control theory provides me with both a conceptual and a technical framework to use mathematics to describe open systems, that is, systems with inputs and outputs, like our brain, like a single cell, like a group of neurons or people or bees or robots or ants; like all those artificial or biological forms in constant interaction with their environment.

"Whatever is the ultimate nature of reality (assuming that this expression has meaning), it is indisputable that our universe is not chaos. We perceive beings, objects, things to which we give names. These beings or things are forms or structures endowed with a degree of stability; they take up some part of space and last for some part of time."   René Thom

Bio  

Alessio Franci received his Laurea Specialistica Degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Pisa in 2008 and his PhD in Physics and Control Theory from the University of Paris Sud 11 in 2012. Between 2012 and 2015 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liege and at INRIA Lille and a long term visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge. Between 2015 and 2022 he was professor in the Math Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Since 2023 he has been professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Liege. His research is interdisciplinary but the central focus is on the control-theoretical and computational principles needed to understand and design biological and bio-inspired intelligent behaviors.

Contact

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

University of Liège

Quartier Polytech 1

10, Allée de la découverte

Sart-Tilman, Building B28,

B-4000 Liège (BELGIUM)