Biography

Alessandro Beghi was born in Padova on December, 30th, 1965. He received the Laurea Degree (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) cum laude in Electrical Engineering in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in “Systems Engineering” in 1993, both from the University of Padova. From January 1990 to April 1991, he served as a Second Lieutenant in the Technical Corps, Italian Army. In 1992 he was Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Theoretical Dynamics, University of California, Davis. In 1993 he was with Ladseb-CNR on a post-doctoral fellowship.

He is with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova since 1994, first as a Researcher (1994-2000), then as an Associate Professor (2000-2017), and presently as a Full Professor of Control Systems Engineering. 

He held visiting positions at the University of California at Davis, the Naval Postgraduate School, (Monterey, CA), EFDA-CSU, Max Plank IPP, (Garching, Germany), EFDA-CSU (Barcelona, Spain).

Teaching activity: he has taught classes on Signals and Systems, Control Systems Theory, Feedback Control Theory, Linear Systems Theory, Optimal and Adaptive Control. He is member of the board of the Ph.D. programs in “Systems Engineering” and "Brain, Mind, and Computer Science" of the University of Padova. He was member of the board of the International Ph.D. program “Joint European Research Doctorate in Fusion Science and Engineering.” He has been the Chair of the Board of the Laurea (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) program in Automation Engineering of the University of Padova (2003-2009). He has tutored the activities of more than 100 M.Sc. students, 12 Ph.D. students, and 10 post-doctoral students.

Scientific and professional activity: reviewer for major journals and Conferences in the Systems and Control Theory field. He received in 2001 the Control System Society Outstanding Referee distinction.

He was a member of the Organizing and Program Committee of several international conferences, including IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control, IEEE Conference on Control Theory and Applications, American Control Conference, International Conference Modeling & Simulation, IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

He is a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society (since 2008, Senior Member since 2015), serving also as Associate Editor of the CSS Conference Editorial Board (since 2010), Co-Chair of the CSS Technical Committee on Power Generation (since 2010), and Chair of the MSC Best Student Paper Award Committee (since 2015). From 1995 to 2001 he was a member of the European Home Team of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project. He has been a member of the Scientific Council of the Center for Research on Fusion (CRF) (2009-13), the Research Center for Geomatics (CIRGEO) (2006-today), and the Human Inspired Technologies Research Center (2013- today), all of the University of Padova. He is co-owner and co-founder of the Technology Incubator M31 S.p.A. (http://www.m31.com.) (2007-today). Since 2014 he is member of the Executive Office of Audio Innova (http://www.audioinnova.com/), and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of EverEst (http://www.energyeverest.com), StatWolf (http://www.statwolf.com), and SimNumerica (http://www.simnumerica.com).

He is member of the Board and Scientific Advisor of the Regional Industrial Cluster Improvenet (ICT for Manufacturing Processes Veneto Network), http://www.improvenet.it

Scientific collaborations: University of California, Davis, CA; Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA); University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, USA; ITER EFDA-CSU, Garching, Germany; EFDA- JET, Culham, UK; General Atomics, San Diego, CA, USA; European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany.

Industrial research partnerships: Piaggio, Aprilia Racing, Ducati Corse, STMicroelectronics, Mechanical Dynamics Italia, MSC.SOFTWARE Corporation, Vi-Grade, Sidel (Tetrapack group), Rhoss, Carel, Infineon Technologies Austria, Micron, MEMC Electronic Materials, Uteco Converters, Electrolux, Emerson Network Power (now Vertiv), CIB Unigas, BFT (Somfy group).

Research funding: National Research Projects (PRIN & Smart Cities) from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (both as member and principal investigator of local units), Università di Padova (as principal investigator), ENEA-EURATOM, European Union Research Framework Programs FP6 and FP7 (as principal investigator of local units), research contracts with the industrial partners.

Recent projects:

- Italian Ministry for University and Research National Project "Current profile control of magnetically confined plasmas for Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion, and its effects on the plasma shape control system performance", (2001-2003), role: University of Padova Team Leader;
- European Project FP6-2003-INFRASTRUCTURE "Technology development programme towards a European Extremely Large Telescope" (2005- 2008), role: University of Padova Team Leader;

- European Project FP7 Joint Technology Initiative -European Nanoelectronics Initiative Advisory Council (ENIAC) ENIAC-2008-1 "IMPROVE: Implementing Manufacturing science solutions to increase equipment PrOductiVity and fab pErformance" , role: University of Padova Team Leader; (2009-2012)

- Italian Ministry for University and Research National Project "Smart Cities" "SEAL: Smart domestics for safe and energy-aware Assisted Living (Smart&safe, Energy-aware Assisted Living)" (2013-2015), role: University of Padova Team Leader

- POR-FESR 2014-2010 Veneto Region Project "PreMANI: "PreMANI – MANIFATTURA PREDITTIVA: progettazione, sviluppo e implementazione di soluzioni di Digital Manufacturing per la previsione della Qualità e la Manutenzione Intelligente" (2018-2020)

Main research interests: theory of stochastic reciprocal processes; model reduction; applications of modern filtering and identification techniques; modelling and control of thermonuclear devices; modelling and control of high-density Hard Disk drives; modelling and control in the automotive and motorcycle industries; modelling and control of HVAC&R systems; control issues in Adaptive Optics for astronomy applications; process control with special emphasis on semiconductor manufacturing.

He has authored/coauthored more than 156 papers on international journals and proceedings of international conferences (a list of recent publications can be found here.)

He holds 6 international patents on applications of advanced control techniques.