Team

I am always looking for talented PhD researchers with interests at the intersection Systems & Control Theory, Learning and Multi-Agent Systems. At this stage, I am looking for outstanding candidates in the following areas. If interested, drop me an email!

1. Decision-making under uncertainty for autonomous agents: this program investigates the design of autonomous agents able to make optimal decisions directly from data, possibly crowdsourcing information from third parties. As such, we will conduct theoretical and algorithmic research on probabilistic data-driven optimal control. It is expected that our methodologies will have a broad range of applicability and we will indeed benchmark our results against specific applications from systems biology and smart cities . The research will develop and build upon tools from optimal control, information science and reinforcement learning.

2. Control of very-large-scale systems: we will conduct theoretical and algorithmic research on the control of very-large-scale systems. Specifically, we will investigate how to control network systems for which only a macroscopic description (via partial differential equations and/or probability densities) is known. These systems abound in nature and technology and we will apply our results to analyze and control multi-vehicle and biochemical systems. The research will develop and build upon tools from nonlinear control and information theory.

3. Multi-agent learning: this program investigates the design of multi-agent systems able to learn iterative tasks. As such, we will conduct theoretical and algorithmic research on the design of multi-agent systems able to learn how to cooperatively perform complex, repetitive, tasks. The key application focus for the algorithms will involve the design of autonomous agents (robots) able to cooperate with humans in order to fulfil a joint task. The research will develop and build upon tools from distributed optimization, decision science and multi-agent systems.

Shihao Xie

Shihao Xie received the B.Eng. degree in aircraft power engineering from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, in 2017 and M.Sc. degree in autonomous vehicle dynamics and control from Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK, in 2018.

He is currently a PhD student with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. His research interests include distributed control of networked systems with its application to automotive engineering and neural networks. Personal website: here.

Emiland Garrabé

Émiland Garrabé is a PHD student in Probabilistic Sequential Decision Making in the Control Group, University of Salerno. He graduated with a double Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics and Electronic Engineering, and a Master's Degree in Autonomous Robotics at Sorbonne Université, France.

His research interests include the design of control laws for systems that are probabilistic in nature, meaning that their behavior is described by probability density functions. He is also interested in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, and their links to his domain of study.

Francesco De Lellis

Francesco De Lellis obtained his master degree in Automation Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II in October 2019. His master thesis focused on the development of model-based control-tutored reinforcement learning providing a solution of the herding problem.

Francesco is now attending his Ph.D. in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II under the supervision of prof.s Mario di Bernardo, Giovanni Russo and Mirco Musolesi. His research deals with the application of non linear control theory and reinforcement learning for the development of new methodologies for the control of multi-agent complex systems.

Under the alias Redoken, Francesco is also an electronic music producer. He released many tunes with well established record label such as Artist Intelligent Agency, DubstepGutter, Stereofox, Riddim Network and many more.

Veronica Centorrino

I am currently a Ph.D. student in Modelling and Engineering Risk and Complexity (MERC) at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale with a PhD project entitled “Towards trustable neural networks bridging the gap between machine learning and control”, under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Bullo (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Prof. Giovanni Russo (DIEM, University of Salerno).

I have graduated cum Laude in Mathematics from the University of Catania, with a thesis entitled “Variational Equilibrium, Lagrangian Theory, and Applications to Network Models”.

In 2020 I held an annual scholarship at the Italian National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in Catania on the topic “Mathematical models for volcanic hazard monitoring and decision-making methods for risk mitigation and uncertainty quantification”.

Sara Brancato

Sara Brancato graduated in Biomedical Engineering in July 2021 at the university of Naples Federico II, with a thesis about the control of a genetic circuits using reinforcement learning strategies.

She received a research fellowship under the supervision of professors Mario di Bernardo and Giovanni Russo.

Her research mainly focused on the use of data driven and learning control techniques on synthetic biological systems.

Hozefa Jesawada

Hozefa Jesawada is pursuing a Ph.D. in Information Technologies for Engineering at the University of Sannio under the joint supervision of Prof. Carmen del Vecchio and Prof. Giovanni Russo.

He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Gujarat Technological University, Dahod, India, and an M.Tech Degree in Control Systems from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Mumbai, India.

His research interests include the application of data-driven control, system identification, and machine learning for distributed control of networked systems.

Other Collaborators (students and postdocs)

  • Davide Fiore (University of Naples, co-supervised with Prof. Mario di Bernardo)

  • Timothy Barker (University of Bristol, co-supervised with Prof. Mario di Bernardo – now with Fidessa, UK)

  • Bernat Guillen-Pegueroles (visiting from Princeton University, USA, now in Google Research Zurich)

  • Gayogan Fan (visiting from Utah University, USA)

  • Yingqi Yu (now Postdoc at Dublin City University – co-supervised with Prof. Shorten)

  • Mingming Liu (now Lecturer at Dublin City University – co-supervised with Prof. Shorten)

  • Julien Monteil (now Researcher at Amazon Ireland)

  • Wynita Griggs (now Lecturer at Monash University, Australia )

  • Rodrigo Ordonez-Hurtado (now Researcher at IBM Research, Ireland)

Former lab members

  • Davide Gagliardi, at University College Dublin (2018-2020)