About
I grew up wanting to know why things move the way they do. That curiosity eventually became a PhD: I build algorithms that find the fastest way a vehicle can move without asking for more grip than it has. I'm a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Program in Materials, Mechatronics and Systems Engineering (DRMMSE) at the University of Trento, where my days split between optimal control theory, C++, and convincing a solver to converge.
The common thread across everything I have worked on - minimum lap time simulation, real-time velocity planning, maneuver negotiation for self-driving cars - is the same question asked at different scales: given the physics a vehicle actually has, what is the fastest, safest thing it can do right now, and can the answer arrive fast enough to be useful. Off the clock, I trade the desk for a mountain: climbing, skiing, mountain biking, or grilling for whoever is around.
Background
2022 - present
PhD candidate, optimal control and motion planning for autonomous and racing vehicles, UniTN
2025
Visiting researcher, Autonomous Vehicle Systems Laboratory, TUM
2020 - 2022
Postgraduate scholarship, then a research fellowship on minimum-time optimal control for racing vehicles, UniTN
2017 - 2020
MSc in Mechatronics Engineering, UniTN
2013 - 2017
BSc in Mechanical Engineering, UniUD
What I work on
- Optimal control for minimum-time trajectory and velocity planning
- Motion planning and sampling-based algorithms for autonomous and racing vehicles
- Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) and safety assurance
- Vehicle dynamics and multibody modeling
- Multi-sensor, hardware-in-the-loop and real-vehicle testing
Skills
A self-rated cheat sheet - reasonably honest, mostly earned the hard way.
| C++ | Advanced |
| MATLAB | Advanced |
| Maple | Intermediate |
| Mathematica | Intermediate |
| Python | Intermediate |
| Ruby | Base |
| Simulink | Base |
| git / GitHub | Advanced |
| LaTeX / Quarto | Advanced |
| PINS | Advanced |
| CMake / Make | Intermediate |
| CarMaker | Intermediate |
| RTMaps | Base |
| CasADi | Base |
| UniTN bureaucracy | Black belt |
| ROS 2 | Minimal experience |
| F1TENTH | Minimal experience |
Collaborations
- DRIVEWISE - Prof. Francesco Biral's research group at the University of Trento; my primary research collaboration.
- neu4mes - collaboration on neural-model-structured frameworks for autonomous driving. Principal investigator: Prof. Gastone Pietro Rosati Papini at the University of Trento.
- AVS - Autonomous Vehicle Systems Laboratory, TUM. Principal investigator: Prof. Johannes Betz; visiting researcher, 2025.