2018 - Chargé de cours, Université de Namur, Namur, Belgium

2016 - 2018 - Senior Lecturer, The Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University London, London, UK

2010-2016 - Lecturer, The Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

2008-2010 - Research associate, Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology (ISTC), Italian National Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy

2002-2008 - Research Associate, Artificial Intelligence Lab (IRIDIA), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

My research interests fall into the interdisciplinary domain of bio-inspired robotics and computational intelligence. In my research activity, I draw inspiration from nature to design control mechanisms to allow artificial agents to operate in a complex environment and to learn from their experience in an autonomous way. The objective of my research work is two-fold. On the one hand, my aim is to engineer autonomous adaptive systems by designing control mechanisms underpinning complex behavioural, social, cognitive, and communication capabilities. On the other hand, I design computational and robotics models to generate new and alternative hypotheses concerning the operational principles of cognition and learning in natural organisms. I believe that advances with respect to the state-of-the-art on autonomous and adaptive systems can be achieved by working on the elements that bear upon the system robustness, adaptability to unpredictable events, and capability to learn from experience. I contribute to this challenge by developing innovative solutions for what concerns the properties of the agents’ controller, by working on the mechanisms underpinning communication in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups of agents, and by exploring the relationship between the sensory-motor characteristics and morphological structure of the agents and their behavioural competencies.

2013 - Postgraduate Certificate for Teaching in Higher Education (PGTHE), Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth (UK)

2004 - PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Sussex, Brighton (UK)

1996 - Master degree in Experimental Psychology, University of Rome "Sapienza", Rome (Italy)