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Mario di Bernardo (SMIEEE ’06, FIEEE 2012) is Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy and Honorary Professor of  Nonlinear Systems and Control at the University of Bristol, U.K. He currently serves as Rector's Delegate for International Relations at the University of Naples Federico II and coordinates the research area and PhD Program on Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity of the Scuola Superiore Meridionale, the new School of Advanced Studies located in Naples. On 28th February 2007 he was bestowed the title of Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for scientific merits from the President of Italy.  In January 2012 he was elevated to the grade of  Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to the analysis, control and applications of nonlinear systems and complex networks. (read more)

Current and recent roles:

• Vice President Technical Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society for the term 2025-2026

• Director of the PhD program in Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity at the SSM - School for Advanced Studies in Naples, Italy

• Rector's Delegate for International Relations 

• Member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2023-2025)

• Senior Editor  IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems

• Steering Committee member of the IEEE Control Systems Letters

• July 2025 - Gian Carlo Maffettone won the prestigious SIDRA Best PhD Thesis Award for his thesis on continuification-based and density control of large-scale multi-agent systems. The prize is awarded every year by SIDRA, the Italian Society of Researchers in Control for the best PhD Thesis in Control in Italy. The award ceremony will be held in Perugia, Italy on 5th September 2025 during the general meeting of the society. 

• July 2025 - Stefano Covone is a finalist of the best SIDRA Master Thesis Award with his thesis on reinforcement learning and shepherding. The final winner will be announced in early September.

• July 2025 - Francesco De Lellis is a finalist of Best Young Author Award of the IEEE CSS Italy Chapter for his paper entitled: F. De Lellis, M. Coraggio, G. Russo, M. Musolesi and M. di Bernardo, “Guaranteeing Control Requirements via Reward Shaping in Reinforcement Learning” in IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 2102-2113, Nov. 2024. 

• June 2025 - Mario di Bernardo and Diego di Bernardo to give joint talks at the Workshop for the professorial inauguration of Lucia Marucci a former member of our group, now professor of Systems and Synthetic Biology at the University of Bristol .

• May 2025 - Mario di Bernardo will be delivering a plenary lecture at the next Chinese Control Conference in Chonqing, China (28-30 July 2025). 

• April 2025 - Mario di Bernardo is invited to present the Galileo Night Lecture by Naomi Leonard (Princeton) at the American Academy in Rome.   

• December 2024 - Beniamino Di Lorenzo wins the Road2CDC Best Master Thesis Award at the IEEE CDC 2024 in MIlan

• July 2024 - A PhD position in Analysis and control of Complex Systems is available in the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network (MSCA-DN) “BeyondTheEdge”.

• July 2024 - Mario di Bernardo appointed Vice President Technical Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society for the 2025-2026 term.

• October 2023 - New collaborative research project MENTOR funded by the Italian Ministry for Research and University started. 

• September 2023 - Marco Coraggio wins the "IEEE-CSS Italy Best Young Paper Award 2023" for the paper "Minmax flow over acyclic networks: distributed algorithms and microgrid application".

• May 2023 - Andrea Lama wins the "red sock" best poster award at the SIAM Conference on Applied Dynamical Systems in Portland (Portland).

• March 2023 - New perspective paper out on Nature Reviews Physics on "Controlling Complex Networks with Complex Nodes" with Raissa D'Souza (UC Davis) and Yang-Yu Liu (Harvard). Check it out online.

• July 2022 - New EU Horizon Europe Project "SHARESPACE" approved for funding. Our team will develop control-based and data-driven cognitive architectures to drive avatars interacting with humans in shared online social spaces. 

• July 2022 - MdB elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society for the term 2023-2025

• June 2022 - Giving a talk and attending this interesting workshop on the future of control at KTH Stockholm including the pre-workshop. Check both out here

• April 2022 - Our work is featured (in Italian) on F-Mag, an online webzine reporting on Enterprise, Innovation and Society. Check the article out here

• November 2021- Complexity and the City - a talk with Louis Bettencourt (Chicago & Santa Fe) on cities as complex systems will be held at the next edition of Futuro Remoto, the oldest Science Festival in Italy which will be held in Naples on 23rd November 2021 @ 5pm. For more info and to register for free check the event website.

• May 2021 - Our talk on COVID-19 mitigation strategies was a featured presentation at the MATLAB World Expo 2021

• November 2020 - Local and national press and TV cover our recent work on COVID-19. Check our press club page

• October 2020 - New paper from our group on modeling and controlling the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy now out in Nature Communications. You can download it from here.

• May 2020 - New PhD Program in Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity has been launched at the SSM - School for Advanced Studies of the University of Naples Federico II. Deadline for applications: 30th June 2020.

• May 2020 - New paper from our group on regional intervention strategies to alleviate the covid-19 epidemic now available as a preprint on Arxiv. 

• April 2020 - New paper on Tunable genetic devices for Synthetic Biology just out on Nature Communications 

• February 2020 - The new research project VECTORS (Advanced Network Control of Future Smart Grids) funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research under the PRIN2017 Call starts today with a kick-off meeting held in Naples. The project is coordinated by our group and involves teams at Pisa, Turin, Padova, Catania and Benevento. For more info see here

• October 2019 - Caos, caso e complessita': cellule, uomini e robot. An event on "Caos, caso e complessita': cellule, uomini e robot"  is being organized by University of Siena. The event will take place in Siena on 15 November 2019. For more details download the flyer clicking here.

• April 2019 - Modeling, analysis, and control of complex networks and cyber-physical systems. An international workshop on “Modeling, analysis, and control of complex networks and cyber-physical systems” is being organized by Mario di Bernardo and Massimo Franceschetti following the European Control Conference in Naples. The workshop will take place on the nearby island  of Ischia  29/06/19 - 30/06/19 and is sponsored by the Italian Society for Chaos and Complexity and IEEE Control Systems Society. All are invited to register and participate to the workshop. For more info see http://www.sicc-it.org/MACCC19/.

• December 2018 - Best PhD Thesis Prize awarded to Francesco Alderisio.  Francesco Alderisio wins Best PhD Thesis Prize from the University of Bristol for his thesis on "Co-ordination and leadership in complex multi-agent systems: analysis, control and application to human ensembles". Check the press release on http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2018/december/best-theses-2018.html.

• May 2018 - PDRA runner up prize to Barbara Shannon.  Barbara Shannon wins the PDRA runner up prize for her poster on "Developing environments for the study of signal integration and decision making in Escherichia coli" presented at the Inaugural Bristol BioDesign Institute Conference. Congratulations Barbara! The poster is available to download clicking here.

• April 2018 - New paper in Science Advances. New paper exploring motifs in a complex network is now available in Science Advances: "New study reveals the rules governing how man-made and biological networks are built". [Read here the press release]

• April 2018 - Faculty of Engineering Commendation to Francesco Alderisio. Francesco Alderisio receives the Faculty of Engineering commendation for his thesis on "Co-ordination and Leadership in Complex Multiagent Systems; analysis control and application to human ensembles". Only 10% of all PhD graduates in Engineering receive this award at Bristol. Congratulations Francesco!