Research Overview

My research interests lie in the area of control systems for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), with the energy and transportation domains as core applications.

My research goals are to achieve a fundamental understanding of the complex behavior of Cyber-Physical Systems and to exploit this understanding for developing new methodologies to solve the challenging problems CPSs possess. I strongly target multidisciplinary research and I combine theoretical and experimental results.

The Research Areas are:

Modeling and Control of Large Scale Systems: development of scalable and modulable control solutions for systems composed by a large number of subsystems.

Optimal Multi-level Information Management: development of a holistic approach for the control of systems composed by several (physical or cyber) levels.

Power Systems: development of advanced (optimal) control strategies for a better integration and utilisation of renewables, with the goal to exploit the results developed in the foundational research areas and to pose new challenges for the theoretical development.

Intelligent Transportation Systems: development of advanced (optimal) control strategies for consumption reduction and traffic throughput maximisation, with the goal to exploit the results developed in the foundational research areas and to pose new challenges for the theoretical development.

Topics of current interest are:

- Control and management methods for MicroGrids dedicated to distributed generation integration;

- Analysis of the interconnections among several AC and DC MicroGrids with the main AC grid;

- Optimal Management of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems for Energy Market participation;

- Predictive control strategies for managing congestion on power transmission networks;
- Adaptive Cruise Control for Autonomous Vehicles;
- Application-oriented physics-aware data-driven estimation and control techniques.