News

Starting this week, the Complex Systems Lab at Politecnico di Torino is contributing to INFLUCAST, the collective forecasting effort for seasonal flu led by ISI Fondazione. Several institutions are contributing to form an improved forecast, reported at https://influcast.org/ – Our effort is based on a province-based metapopulation model, originally developed for SARS-CoV2, adapted to specific characteristics of influenza. Modeling details can be found here

The National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) hosted our research on social robotics in its bulletin. Paper here! (in Italian)

Prof. Rizzo gave an invited Keynote talk on “Incorporating human behavior into network epidemic models” at the Italian Regional Conference on Complex Systems organized by Scuola Superiore Meridionale in Naples

Prof. Rizzo gave an invited talk on behavioral modeling in epidemics at the school “Complex networks: from socio-economic systems to biology and the brain”  organized by the J.T. Schwarz Lipari School.

Francesco Parino, PhD student in Electrical, Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, successfully defended his thesis on “Mathematical modeling and control of epidemics as decision support systems to steer effective public health  policies.” Graduated with honors! Congratulations and best of luck!

Our paper “A model predictive control approach to optimally devise a two-dose vaccination rollout: A case study on COVID-19 in Italy”  published in the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control has been one of the most downloaded during its first 12 months of publications! Congratulations to the co-authors Giuseppe Carlo Calafiore, Francesco Parino, Lorenzo Zino!!

Our paper “High‐Resolution Agent‐Based Modeling of COVID‐19 Spreading in a Small Town” has been recognized also this year as a “Top Cited” one in the journal Advanced Theory and Simulation (Wiley)

Of all the articles published in 2021, our paper “Modelling and predicting the effect of social distancing and travel restrictions on COVID-19 spreading” published in the Journal of Royal Society Interface is one of the top five most highly cited! Congratulations to all the coauthors!

Starting Jaunary 1st, 2023, Dr. Rizzo has been appointed as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and of the IEEE Control Systems Letters

In January 2023 Dr. Rizzo has been elected as the vice chair of the Italian Chapter of the IEEE Control Systems Society

The Center for Urban Studies and Progress of New York University is hosting Dr. Rizzo for a seminar entitled “Epidemic modeling and forecasting: a journey from the cocktail assumption (shaken, not stirred) to the advent of agent-based computations”. Free registration and details here.

Dr. Rizzo has been awarded for the second time with an Amazon Research Award in Robotics. The research topic is “Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Trustworthy Control of Autonomous Robots”

Our paper “High‐Resolution Agent‐Based Modeling of COVID‐19 Spreading in a Small Town” has been recognized as a “Top Cited” one in the journal Advanced Theory and Simulation (Wiley)

Our paper “Predicting the Effects of Waning Vaccine Immunity Against COVID-19 through High-Resolution Agent-Based Modeling” published in Advanced Theory and Simulations (Wiley) has been featured by Advanced Science News and NYU Tandon

Our Paper “vector-based pedestrian navigation in cities“, published in Nature Computational Science, has been featured in the One-Year Anniversary Collection of the journal!

Prof. Rizzo has joined the Editorial Board of Communications Engineering, the first publication of the Nature Group entirely focusing on Engineering through a multidisciplinary lens. Communications Engineering is a selective open access journal from Nature Portfolio publishing high-quality research, reviews and commentary in all areas of engineering. Research papers published by the journal represent significant advances for a specialized area of research and development. We also aim to provide a community forum for issues of importance to all engineers, regardless of sub-discipline. Meet the whole editorial board here!

Prof. Rizzo was invited to talk about robotics at the dissemination radio show Eulero broadcasted by Radio Banda Larga – Audio here! (in Italian)

The team “AutomaTO”, composed by Alessandro Dell’Atti, Lucrezia Lovaglio, Alessio Zaino, MSc students in Mechatronic Engineering, has been admitted to the Bosch Future Mobility Challenge! They will challenge 50 teams from 10 different nations worldwide to advance the knowledge on autonomous vehicle systems, using a scale 1/10 prototype provided by Bosch. Supervised by Prof. Rizzo, they will work hard in these months toward the Final on May 15! Good luck!

Prof. Rizzo joins the Institute for Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at New York University Tandon School of Engineering

Our paper in Nature Computational Science featured in many web news outlet and with a News and Views in the same issue of the journal

Prof. Rizzo joins the International Programm Commitee of the 1st IFAC Workshop on Control of Complex Systems, COSY 2022 

Our PhD student Francesco Parino has been listed in the five finalists (out of 139 submissions) for the best presentation award at the National Conference of Italian  Professors and Researchers in Control (Automatica ’21)  – Kudos!

Our work on masks and social distancing during COVID-19 covered by the National press and TV (La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, La stampa, TV TG3 Piemonte, TV La7 “di martedì”)

Our NYU – PoliTO collaboration made the cover of Advanced Theory and Simulations with our research on COVID-19 transmission!

Dr. Rizzo joins the editorial board of the Journal of Computational Science as an Associate Editor

The US and International press cover our research on modeling of COVID-19 transmission in Italy (Huffington Post Spain, Preferente (Spain), Futurity, NBC New York, NYU Tandon News)

The Italian press and television cover our research on modeling of COVID-19 transmission in Italy (Il Fatto Quotidiano, La Repubblica, il Corriere della Sera, TG3 Leonardo, TG3 Piemonte)

Our agent-based model results on vaccination from COVID-19 covered by The New York Post , Politecnico di Torino News, NYU news, Advanced Science News and many other websites (Fast Company, healthcarefinance,insurancejournal…)

Dr. Rizzo gives two invited speeches at two satellite events of the 2020 Conference on Complex Systems: Machine Learning Perspective for Complex Networks and Urban Complex Systems

November 2020 – Dr. Rizzo invited as a panelist to an outreach event (talk show) about the scientific method and the dystopic present of COVID-19 during the European Night of Researchers (online)

Dr. Rizzo’s research on drones covered by the National Press (Repubblica, in Italian)

Dr. Rizzo has been awarded with an Amazon Research Award for the project “From Shortest to Safest Path Navigation: An AI-Powered Framework for Risk-Aware Autonomous Navigation of UAS”

Dr. Rizzo has been awarded with an NSF RAPID grant on “Agent-based Modeling Toward Effective Testing and Contact-tracing During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in collaboration with Dr. Maurizio Porfiri and Dr. Zhong-Ping Jiang at New York University

The book chapter the chapter “Toward a Realistic Modeling of Epidemic Spreading with Activity Driven Networks” has been assessed to belong to  COVID-19 related studies and deposited as a freely available resource on PubMedCentral as well as World Health Organization to help worldwide researchers currently working on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dr. Rizzo gives an invited lecture to the 2nd International School on Informatics and Dynamics in Complex Networks at the University of Catania, Italy

Our work on leader-follower dynamics on temporal networks featured in the “Scope Monthly” magazine of New York University Tandon School of Engineering