Vitae

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Professional Experience

  • Research Assistant

    EPFL & Idiap Research Institute - Lausanne & Martigny, Switzerland
    June 2021 - Present

    • Supported by EPFLglobaLeaders fellowship (MSCA COFUND programme) since Feb 2022.
    • Developed both GNN and physics based state-of-the-art models for thermal network simulations (Eguzki project, PyDHN library).
    • Created pipelines for collecting and analyzing data from hundreds of sensors in real time.
    • Participated in IEA EBC Annex 84 activities.
    • Served as Journal Reviewer for 30+ articles on ML for energy and sustainability.

  • Intern

    Satom SA - Monthey, Switzerland
    June 2023 - November 2023

    • Built a pipeline to forecast customers' energy needs using open data.
    • Modeled future energy scenarios for infrastructure planning.
    • Analyzed network extension projects to identify bottlenecks.

  • Research Intern

    Idiap Research Institute - Martigny, Switzerland
    December 2020 - May 2021

    • Developed a ML-based smart building control system still in use at Idiap (LUCIDELES project).
    • Created data processing pipelines for thermal network monitoring data.
    • Performed sensitivity analysis for the CitySim urban energy simulator.

  • Research Trainee

    Idiap Research Institute - Martigny, Switzerland
    January 2019 - March 2019

    • Applied machine learning techniques for building energy prediction.
    • Developed scripts to automate CitySim simulations and data extraction.

Education

  • PhD in Electrical Engineering

    EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) - Lausanne, Switzerland
    Expected: June 2025

    • Recipient of the EPFLglobaLeaders Fellowship (MSCA COFUND).
    • Thesis Title (Provisional): Towards Quasi Real-time Simulations of District Heating Networks for an Optimal Sustainable Design and Control

  • M.Eng + M.Arch in Building Engineering & Architecture

    University of Pisa - Pisa, Italy
    February 2020

    • Thesis: Bridging the Energy Performance Gap: an Artificial Intelligence Based Model for Urban-scale Simulations

Teaching & Supervision

  • Teaching Assistant - Automatic Speech Processing (EE-554) EPFL - Fall Semester 2024 Assisted ~25 students with course concepts and assignments. Corrected and graded exams.
  • Teaching Assistant - Fundamentals of Machine Learning (EE-311) EPFL - Spring Semesters 2023, 2024 Assisted ~50 students per semester with course concepts and assignments. Lead TA and lab instructor in 2024.
  • Teaching Assistant (1 session) - Deep Learning (EE-559) EPFL - Spring Semesters 2024 Led preparation of lab session on Graph Learning for ~150 students.
  • Semester Project co-supervisor - Xiyun Fu
    EPFL - Fall Semester 2023 Advised on estimating pressure and temperature distribution in thermal grids using k-hops graph neural networks.
  • Invited Lecturer - Workshop "Sustainability of urban landscapes" Polytechnic University of Turin - October 2021 Presented on ML applications in urban energy modeling. Prepared assignments for the students.
  • Thesis co-supervisor Chiara Apruzzese (MSc)
    University of Pisa - 2021 Advised on a data-driven study applying text mining to assess indoor environmental quality in hospitality buildings.

Skills

  • Core Areas: Machine Learning, Deep Learning (esp. GNNs), Data Science, Energy System Modeling & Simulation, Scientific Computing, Technical Writing
  • Programming: Python (Advanced), SQL (Intermediate), C++/Fortran (Debugging)
  • Libraries & Frameworks: PyTorch, TensorFlow/Keras, Scikit-learn, Pandas, NumPy, GeoPandas, Matplotlib, NetworkX
  • Tools & Platforms: PostgreSQL/PostGIS, QGIS, Docker, Slurm, Git, Weights & Biases
  • Languages: Italian (Native), English (Fluent), French (Beginner)

Grants & Awards

  • EPFLglobaLeaders Fellowship (2021-2025)
    Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND PhD fellowship program at EPFL (call with ~2.5% acceptance rate).
  • Best Poster Award - CISBAT 2021 International Conference (2021)
    For the paper "A machine-learning model for the prediction of aggregated building energy demand from pan-European open datasets".

Selected Projects

  • PyDHN

    An open-source Python library for the dynamic thermo-hydraulic simulation of district heating networks with complex topologies. Lead developer.

    [Code]

  • Eguzki

    SFOE-funded project focused on developing GNN-based surrogate models for accelerating the simulation and optimization of large-scale thermal networks.

  • IEA EBC Annex 84

    International collaboration on data-driven smart buildings, contributing to subtasks related to digital twins and occupant behavior modeling.

  • LUCIDELES

    SFOE-funded project investigating human-centric smart building control systems, focusing on lighting and blind automation using ML.

  • HeatLearn

    Predicting urban heat demand using CNNs and open geospatial data.

Other Activities

  • Co-organizer, Idiap's "Perspectives on AI" workshop series (2023 - 2024)
  • Team Member, Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018 (University of Pisa Team)
  • Founder & Former Player, Hydra Dodgeball Viareggio (2020)