People

ACADEMIC STAFF

Edmondo Minisci

Director

Senior Lecturer in Multi-disciplinary Design Optimisation for Aerospace Systems at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of University of Strathclyde. Edmondo has 20+ years of experience in the field of model based analysis and design of mechanical systems/devices, and is currently involved in projects regarding: a) global optimization of trans-atmospheric and interplanetary trajectories, b) uncertainty based multidisciplinary design optimisation of space transportation systems, wind turbines and spacecraft,  c) modelling and simulation of (re-)entering space objects (space-debris and asteroids), and d) machine learning based meta-modelling approaches. Edmondo is also founder member and former general manager of OPTIMAD Engineering S.r.l. – Italian SME, Spin-off of the Politecnico di Torino, active in the field of aerodynamic analysis, design, and optimization.

Annalisa Riccardi

Associate director

Lecturer in Computational Intelligence at the Mechanical and Aerospace Department of the University of Strathclyde.  She has more than 7 years of experience in optimisation techniques and applications.
She is currently involved in projects on data driven modeling and decision making for engineering design.

Massimiliano Vasile

Scientific advisor

Professor of Space Systems Engineering in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. Before starting his academic career in 2004, he was the first member of the ESA Advanced Concepts Team and initiator of the ACT research stream on global trajectory optimisation, mission analysis and biomimicry. His research interests include Computational Optimization, Robust Design and Optimization Under Uncertainty exploring the limits of computer science at solving highly complex problems in science and engineering.

Stuart Grey

Scientist

Teaching fellow in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. His research focuses on the precise orbit determination of the entire space debris population, in particular how non-conservative forces effect the shape, attitude and orbit of debris.

Christie Maddock

Scientist

Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. Current research interests are dynamics & control modelling for aerospace vehicles including optimising preliminary design parameters in terms of operations, performance and life-cycle impact.

RESEARCH STAFF

Mateusz Polnik

PhD student

PhD student working on discrete optimization under uncertainty. Mateusz has a master’s degree in Development and Integration of Software Systems. Before joining university he used to work as a full stack software engineer on content distribution, control systems, software automation and virtualization.

    Carlos Ortega Absil

    PhD student

    PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University of Strathclyde. Research interests are design under uncertainty, global and multi-objective optimisation. Currently working on methodologies for the resilient design of large-scale space systems under epistemic uncertainty.

      Deep Bandivadekar

      PhD student

      PhD student. His research interests include  computational fluid dynamics, hypersonics, numerical analysis, design optimisation. He works on design of transpiration cooling based thermal protection systems and hopes to make access to space safer and cheaper. He is an aspiring science communicator and the editor-in-chief (Strathclyde) for Glasgow-based student run science communication magazine theGIST. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and photography, and blogs about it occasionally at bhingri.in.

        Audrey Berquand

        PhD student

        PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University of Strathclyde since January 2018. Audrey obtained her MSc in Aerospace Engineering from KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Before joining the ICE lab she worked for three years as a space system engineer for Earth Observation future missions at ESTEC, European Space Agency (ESA). Her research is focused on semi-automatically generating a Knowledge Graph for Space Mission Design, in the frame of the Design Engineering Assistant project, to enhance current concurrent engineering design processes and decision making at the early phases of space missions design. This project is half funded by ESA and in cooperation with industrial partners (RHEA, Airbus, Satsearch) in the frame of a Networking/Partnering Initiative (NPI).

          Lorenzo Gentile

          PhD student

          Early stage researcher at Technische Hochschule Köln.

          His work is focused developing and studying evolutionary optimisation methods with regard to mixed-integer problems involving uncertainty.

            Callum Wilson

            PhD Student

            PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He completed his Master’s degree in Aero-Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde in 2018 before starting his PhD and upon completion of his degree was awarded the IMechE Best Student Certificate. He is researching intelligent control (IC) methods in aerospace and currently investigating existing IC methods from other fields which have potential in aerospace. In particular, the PhD project will focus on on-board control using IC where limited computational power and memory is available.

              Francesco Marchetti

              PhD Student

              PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He completed his Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, major in Space Engineering, at the Politecnico di Torino in 2017. Before moving to Strathclyde he worked for MCA Engineering Italy as test engineer at Mecaer Aviation Group. He is researching intelligent control (IC) methods in aerospace and currently investigating existing IC methods from other fields which have potential in aerospace. In particular, the PhD project will focus on IC methods for access to space.

                Cheyenne Powell

                PhD student

                PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. She has a keen interest in the developing solutions for the future of the human species in space and completed her MSc in Astronautics and Space Engineering at Cranfield University in 2020. Her master’s thesis was to design a closed loop self-sustainable system to study the characteristic of Microalgae for a deep space environment for a payload, which was completed while working as a Project Manager Controls Engineer at TE Connectivity in the UK. Her PhD research focuses on explainable AI for mission planning and scheduling to further develop safe and expansive missions in space.

                  ALUMNI

                  Romain Serra

                  Research Associate

                  He graduated with his PhD in Control Engineering from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquees de Toulouse in 2015.
                  His research interests are in guidance, control and dynamics of spacecraft, uncertainty quantification for end-of-life trajectory and atmospheric re-entry in Earth orbit.

                  From March 2018 he is at Thales in Toulouse as “Study and Development Engineer”

                    Marilena Di Carlo

                    Post Doc

                    Post-Doc at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. She received her PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, with a thesis on Multi-Fidelity Global Low-Thrust Trajectory Optimisation. Before moving to Strathclyde she worked as a junior mission analyst and received her Bachelor and Master degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy. Her research interests included robust low-thrust spacecraft trajectory optimisation, astrodynamics, evolutionary computation and intelligent control.

                    From 2018 she has been working at OHB in Bremen.

                        Giulio Maddalena

                        PhD Student

                        PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University of Strathclyde. He received his Bachelor and Master degrees in Aerospace and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy. Current research is on uncertainty based multidisciplinary design optimisation of space launch vehicles, with special focus on operational performance. PhD scholarship co-funded by Airbus Safran Lauchers.

                        Giulio terminated his PhD studies in August 2018.

                          Martin Kubicek

                          PhD student

                          PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University of Strathclyde.
                          His research interests were on uncertainty quantification. During his PhD he has developed a new methodology and different techniques for uncertainty quantification successfully applied to real life engineering problems that proved to be very robust and efficient. PhD scholarship co-funded by Optimad Engineering Srl.

                          Martin successfully passed his viva in September 2017 and started his own company in January 2018. You can find more info about the company at https://uptim.ai/

                            Lorenzo Ricciardi

                            PhD student

                            PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University of Strathclyde. He received his MSc in Aeronautical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. Throughout his degree he always had a very deep interest in nonlinear dynamics and control, numerical methods and simulations, mathematical modelling and programming as tools to understand complex systems and interactions. He worked on Multi-Objective optimisation and Optimal Control.

                              John Hutcheson

                              PhD Student

                              PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He received his MEng degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh. Before moving to Strathclyde he worked as a hydraulic applications engineer for Bosch Rexroth, focused on working with customers in the agriculture and forestry business sectors. His research, in collaboration with The Weir Group, was focussed on understanding and developing methods of topology optimisation for the design of hydraulic devices.

                                  Niall Morrison

                                  PhD Student

                                  PhD Student in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He received his Bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Strathclyde before joining the ICE Lab and is carrying out his PhD research in collaboration with the Weir Advanced Research centre.

                                  His research was focussed on the development and application of design optimisation techniques to optimise the shape of existing hydraulic devices.