CV
Short bio
Saverio Bolognani received the Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 2011. In 2006-2007, he was a visiting graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. In 2013-2014, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (MA). He is currently a Senior Scientist at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on feedback control and optimization of complex systems, including online feedback optimization, game-theoretic and data-driven control of multi-agent systems, and welfarist control design that balances efficiency and fairness. His main application is the real-time operation of power systems, along with systems where automation and people interact.
His student co-authors have won or been finalists for student paper awards at the American Control Conference, IEEE PowerTech, and IFAC CPHS, and have received multiple ETH Medals and the IFAC Industry Committee Doctoral Thesis Award. His research has been awarded the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Paper Award (2022) and the Watt d’Or Award (2024). In 2023, he received the ETH Golden Owl teaching award.
I am the Scientific Coordinator and a PI of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation. Here is a short video about my interests (YouTube).
Education
I received my Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering in 2011 from the University of Padova in Italy, under the supervision of Prof. Sandro Zampieri.
Before that, I received my M.Sc. degree in Automation Engineering, also from the University of Padova in Italy. During my graduate studies, in 2006/07, I was a visiting student at the University of California, San Diego, where I wrote my M.Sc. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Miroslav Krstić.
Research positions
In 2013-2014 I was Postdoc at the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems at MIT, in the group of Prof. Munther Dahleh.
I have been at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zurich since 2015, in Prof. Florian Dörfler’s group.
Research projects (Principal Investigator)
- 2027 Equitable mobility management as a distribution control problem NCCR Automation · co-PIs: Florian Dörfler, Kenan Zhang
- 2027 Ethical automated decision making: From optimisation to sequential decisions NCCR Automation · co-PI: John Lygeros
- 2027 Unleashing Local Energy Communities: Unlocking untapped value through automation and fair sharing principles NCCR Automation · co-PI: Line Roald
- 2025 OPFV2: Automated incentives for voltage support procurement NCCR Automation
- 2024 MAESTRO – Multi-Agent Energy Systems in Transmission Grid Real-time Operation Swiss Federal Office of Energy
- 2024 Multi-agent control with limited interpersonal comparability NCCR Automation · co-PI: Heinrich Nax
- 2024 Karma Economies NCCR Automation · co-PI: Andrea Censi
- 2024 Mean-field Multi-Agent Reinforcement learning (MF-MARL) for fair resource allocation NCCR Automation · co-PI: Emilio Frazzoli
- 2021 Urban driving games NCCR Automation · co-PIs: Florian Dörfler, Emilio Frazzoli
- 2021 Dynamic population games for efficient autonomous mobility NCCR Automation · co-PIs: Florian Dörfler, Emilio Frazzoli
- 2019 UNICORN – A unified control framework for real-time power system operation Swiss Federal Office of Energy
- 2019 TEAMVAR2 – Networked feedback control of distributed energy resources for real-time voltage regulation EU H2020 ERIGrid grant
- 2017 TEAMVAR – Networked feedback control of distributed energy resources for real-time voltage regulation EU H2020 ERIGrid grant
Descriptions of these projects are on the research projects page.
Honors and awards
- 2026 IFAC Industry Committee Doctoral Thesis Award student: Lukas Ortmann
- 2025 Young Author Award 5th IFAC Workshop on Cyber-Physical and Human Systems · student: Ezzat Elokda
- 2024 Watt d’Or Award
- 2023 ETH Golden Owl Award
- 2022 Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL) Prize Paper Award
- 2020 ETH Medal for Outstanding Master Thesis student: Ezzat Elokda
- 2020 SGA Förderpreis Award student: Verena Häberle
- 2020 ETH Medal for Outstanding Master Thesis student: Verena Häberle
- 2017 Basil Papadias Student Paper Award IEEE PES PowerTech · students: A. Hauswirth and A. Zanardi
- 2016 Best Student Paper Award finalist American Control Conference · student: B. K. Poolla
- 2011 “Ottavio Bonazzi 2011” Award AICT (ICT section of the AEIT)
- 2009 Best Student Paper Award NecSys 09
- 2007 Provost’s Honor Thurgood Marshall College, University of California, San Diego
- 2006 Innovation Prize IEEE First Region 8 Robotic Contest