LEONARDO STELLA

PHD STUDENT AUTOMATIC CONTROL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

NEWS

April 2019 - Start of secondment position as software development at Softeco within the EU project ProSFeT: http://www.prosfet.eu/PROSFET/.
February 2019 - Our paper on collective decision-making on complex networks has been published in Automatica.
October 2018 - Our paper on collective decision-making on complex networks has been accepted for publication in Automatica.
May 2018 - Our paper on symmetric and asymmetric models for evolutionary game dynamics has been published in IEEE Control Systems Letters.

ABOUT

I graduated in Computer Engineering at Università degli studi di Palermo (Italy), with my final year dissertation on the subject “Opinion dynamics and stubbornness through mean-field games” in 2013, after receiving the departmental scholarship to study for two years in the bachelor’s programme at USI, Università della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland), in the faculty of Informatics. In 2016, I received my master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the university La Sapienza (Italy), where the dissertation involved a joint work with the team of Università Tor Vergata for the EU project Superfluidity. I am currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Sheffield (UK), in the department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, under the supervision of Dr. Roderich Gross, and initially Prof. Dario Bauso.

RESEARCH

My research topic involves bio-inspired collective decision-making in a game theoretic and multi-agent frameworks. The game theoretic aspects include the study of evolutionary game dynamics, stability properties, complex networks. In the multi-agent case, the impact of a virus propagating in a smart grid setting is investigated.

My main research interests include collective decision-making, multi-agent systems, game theory, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, game design, 3D rendering, machine learning and their applications.

PROJECTS

ProSFeT (Freight Logistics in Urban Context)

The ProSFeT project (http://www.prosfet.eu/PROSFET/) aims at improving logistics operations and local authority planning within the urban freight framework. The main objectives include a review of the urban freight transport in Europe, the utilisation of stakeholders' engagement methods and the use of decision support tools.

My role in the project is to develop a decision tool (.Net/C#) which provides additional information to stakeholders in order to support the feasibility of urban consolidation centres (UCCs) in urban context. Specifically, the tool extends a traditional planner to include costs in terms of personnel, vehicles, orders, distances, etc. A key aspect captured by the tool is the calculation of the advantages of using a UCC in terms of CO2 consumption vs a direct shipping approach.

Decision makers can use the tool to test a set of different scenarios, by placing the UCC according to different sets of rules. By running the planner, the planning results can be used to estimate costs of the UCC in the specified scenario and to obtain some metrics on how to optimise logistics in the considered urban context.

SUPERFLUIDITY (5G)

The SUPERFLUIDITY project (http://superfluidity.eu/) aims at deploying 5G in Europe. As in physics a matter is in the superfluidity state when it behaves like a fluid with zero viscosity, so the main objectives of the project are to achieve the same in the Internet. The key points include fast instantiation of services, easy use of these services independently of where the user is in the network (whether it is in the core, aggregation or edge), and to shift them to new locations.

My role in the project was to study virtualisation through a set of container deployer softwares, like Kubernetes (https://kubernetes.io/) and nomad (https://www.nomadproject.io/). The aim was to instantiate and destroy virtual machines through both orchestrators after designing a method to interact with them on a linux machine. The performances of the proposed methods were therefore tested and compared for results.

SUPERFLUIDITY is aimed at providing "a converged cloud-based 5G concept that will enable innovative use cases in the mobile edge, empower new business models, and reduce investment and operational costs".

Restless Army (MMO/Battle Royale Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Game)

The idea for this game comes from the recent releases of great horror games of the same genre, e.g. Resident Evil 2 Remake, Days Gone, Dying Light and Dying Light The Following, and the shift in trend towards Battle Royale games such as

More information to come...

The Last Grove-Keeper (Indie Game)

More information to come...

PUBLICATIONS

JOURNALS

Bio-inspired Evolutionary Dynamics on Complex Networks under Uncertain Cross-inhibitory Signals

L. Stella, D. Bauso.

Automatica, vol. 100, pp. 61-66, 2019.

Bio-Inspired Evolutionary Game Dynamics in Symmetric and Asymmetric Models

L. Stella, D. Bauso.

IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 405-410, 2018.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

On the nonexistence of stationary solutions in bio-inspired collective decision making via mean-field game

L. Stella, D. Bauso.

IEEE 56th Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Melbourne, VIC, Australia, pp. 787-792, 2017.

Stationary and initial-terminal value problem for collective decision making via mean-field games

L. Stella, D. Bauso.

25th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED), Valletta, Malta, pp. 1125-1130, 2017.

Evolutionary Game Dynamics for Collective Decision Making in Structured and Unstructured Environments

L. Stella, D. Bauso.

20th IFAC World Congress, Toulouse, France, vol 50, no. 1, pp. 11914-11919, 2017.

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