I am a Research Fellow in the Department of Information Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Applied Mathematics (DIEM) at the University of Salerno. My research interests lie at the intersection of control theory and applied mathematics, with a focus on robust nonlinear control, optimization, and bio-inspired neural networks.

I received my Bachelor’s (2017) and Master’s degree (2019) in Mathematics from the University of Catania, Italy. In 2020, I was awarded 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”.

I obtained my PhD in Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity (MERC) at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples, Italy, where I was advised by Francesco Bullo and Giovanni Russo. During my PhD, I spent one year (Sept. 2022 – Aug. 2023) as a visiting scholar in Prof. Francesco Bullo’s lab at the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation at University of California Santa Barbara. In spring 2024, I also visited the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich for six weeks, hosted by Professor Florian Dörfler.

In my spare time, I enjoy playing guitar, soccer, exploring new places… and eating pizza!

NEWS

• 2025: Thrilled to share that, starting this September, I will be joining Professor John Lygeros’s group as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich!
• 2025 June: June 2025: Our paper “Time-varying convex optimization: A contraction and equilibrium tracking approach,” is now out in the IEEE Transactions of Automatic Control! → URL. This is joint work with Alexander Davydov, Anand Gokhale, Giovanni Russo, and Francesco Bullo.
• 2025 January: Guess I am a Doctor now… but please don’t call me if you are ill! Happy to share I successfully defended my PhD thesis “Contracting Dynamics for Biologically Plausible Neural Networks and Optimization” (pdf) (optimum cum laude). Endless thanks to my supervisors, Francesco and Giovanni, and to everyone who has been part of this incredible journey.
• 2024 December: Our article “Euclidean Contractivity of Neural Networks With Symmetric Weights” with Anand Gokhale, Alexander Davydov, Giovanni Russo, and Francesco Bullo (URL), received the 2024 IEEE Control Systems Letters Outstanding Paper Award!
• 2024 December: Presented the work “On Weakly Contracting Dynamics for Convex Optimization” (URL) on the invited Session Contraction Theory in Systems and Control I at CDC2024, Milan.
• 2024 July: Presented at the workshop “Variational Inequalities, Nash Equilibrium Problems and Applications” (VINEPA), Catania.
• 2024 June: Visited Professor Giancarlo Ferrari Trecate at EPFL Lausanne and gave a talk on contraction theory, biologically inspired neural networks and optimization.
• 2024 May/June: Enjoyed a six-week visit to the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich, hosted by Professor Florian Dörfler: many stimulating conversations and cherished time with amazing people!
• 2024 June: The final version of your article “On Weakly Contracting Dynamics for Convex Optimization”, is now out in IEEE Control Systems Letters! → URL.
• 2024 May: The final version of your article “Positive Competitive Networks for Sparse Reconstruction”, is now out in Neural Computation! → URL.
• 2024 April: The final version of your article “Modelling and Contractivity of Neural-Synaptic Networks with Hebbian Learning”, that will appear soon in Automatica, is now available online! → URL.