The mission of the MOVEMENT Research Group is to develop optimization models and methods for systems and control.

“Before being engineers, you are first and foremost humans”

F. De Sanctis

The mission of MOVEMENT (Modeling and Optimization for Vehicle Electrification, Mobility, Energy and Novel Topics) Research Group is to develop optimization models and methods for systems and control. Our focus lies in devising design and control methods for multi-scale cyber-socio-technical systems, with applications in mobility and energy systems, pandemics, and ceramic materials.

Sustainable Mobility Systems for Justice and Well-being: Mobility systems are facing significant challenges such as environmental pollution and social injustice. The advent of autonomy, connectivity, and electrification, combined with recent advances in optimal control and optimization methods, may provide us with opportunities to address such challenges, whilst luring us into the engineering trap, where technological solutions are engineered as an answer to the wrong question. The main goal of our research is rethink the design of mobility systems in line with principles of justice and well-being, with sustainability as an integral component. In this context, our research lines are aimed at mobilizing principles of justice and well-being from social sciences to engineering design methods, and at devising modelling and algorithmic framework to jointly optimize the design and operation of mobility systems, from the individual vehicles and aircraft to intermodal mobility systems and electric regional air mobility networks, as well as fair incentive schemes to achieve system-optimal operations.

Pandemic Control: During the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have been struggling to decide which policies to implement to limit the outbreak whilst minimizing collateral damage. Our research focuses on the development of epidemiological optimization models and control algorithms to support policymakers in the roll-out of NPIs and vaccination strategies.

Ceramic Materials: Ceramics show great promise to serve as key enabling materials in many fields, such as green energy, affordable communication, cleaner aviation, and biomedical technologies. However, their applications are severely hindered by their brittleness, which is their poor toughness against fracture. To overcome this limitation, we pursue the development of tougher ceramics by integrating optimization algorithms with an experimental-numerical platform. Through this approach, we aim to streamline the material design process and reduce the need for extensive experimental campaigns.  Currently, we are collaborating with Group Giuntini (https://research.tue.nl/en/organisations/group-giuntini ) on the Double-tough Material Meta-experimental Design Optimization (DoMaMeDO) project (concluded in 2024).