Leadership & Supervision

Managing EU, Belgian projects, supervise research engineers, industrial PhDs, Master theses, and co-supervising academic Postdocs/PhDs with EU institutions

I enjoy inspiring and guiding the next generation of R&D engineers and researchers. My supervision approach combines innovative methods, industry application, and efficient engineering workflow (often on Digital Twin). Alongside my role at Siemens, I co-supervise industrial PhDs and Master’s theses with leading European institutions.

Interested in a Master’s thesis at Siemens? Contact me.

PhDs & Postdocs

Jean Pierre Allamaa

co-supervised with Prof. Panos Patrinos (ESAT, KU Leuven)

2021-2025
Embedded Learning and Optimization for Autonomous Vehicle Control: Bridging the Gap from Simulation to Reality

Flavia Sofia Acerbo

co-supervised with Prof. Jan Swevers (Mech Dept., KU Leuven) and Prof. Tinne Tuytelaars (ESAT, KU Leuven)

2021-2025
Learning from Demonstrations for Human-Like Autonomous Driving: A Differentiable Optimal Control Approach

Renzi Wang

co-supervised with Prof. Panos Patrinos (ESAT, KU Leuven)

2021-2025
Embedded Learning and Optimization for Interaction-aware Model Predictive Control

Shuhao Zhang

co-supervised with Prof. Jan Swevers (Mech Dept., KU Leuven)

2022-2026
Robustified Time-optimal Motion Planning and Control: Practical Formulation, Implementation and Validation

Dr. Gabriele Fadini

co-supervised with Prof. Alisa Rupenyan-Vasileva (ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences)

2025-2027
From Virtual Prototyping to Reactive Adaptation: Digital Twins in Modern Manufacturing (Swiss NCCR Automation project on Robotics)

Rory Halsall

co-supervised with Prof. Mark Cannon and Prof. Kostas Margellos (University of Oxford)

2025-2029
Data-driven Optimal Control for Air Mobility and Battery Management

Danial Safaei

co-supervised with Prof. Siddartha Khastgir, Mohsen Alirezaei, Jeroen Ploeg, Xingyu Zhao, Matthew Higgins (WMG, University of Warwick)

2024-2028
Safe AI, Scenario-based Testing, and Synthetic Data Fidelity for Autonomous Systems

Master's Thesis Supervision

20+ Master's theses supervised across autonomous systems, AI, and control engineering. The theses are in collaboration with control, robotics groups from KU Leuven, TU Delft, EPFL - Lausanne, ETHZ - Zurich and other leading European institutions. About 8 of them found job at Siemens after thesis graduation; others got job in industry or PhD programs or startups.

Advisory Activities

PhD Jury
9 Doctoral Defenses

Serving as examiner for PhD defenses across leading European institutions

KU Leuven Oxford WMG
Advisory Board
5+ Programs

Advisory board for the national projects, academic programs

EU Research Projects Education Program
Invited Lecturer

Give lecture on industrial applications of control and AI

Formula Student Germany Polimi EPFL Imperial Univ. Liverpool KU Leuven