Andrea Ghezzi

PhD Student

Short Bio

Andrea Ghezzi was born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1996. He obtained his Master degree cum laude in Automation and Control Engineering from Politecnico di Milano with a thesis about stochastic MPC with constraint prioritization. From December 2020 to September 2021 he was a researcher at Data Science R&D Department of Tenaris Dalmine, working on virtual sensing for improving the steel making process. From October 2021 he joined SYSCOP Laboratory at University of Freiburg, carrying out a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Moritz Diehl. He is a Marie-Curie fellow of the ELO-X project.

Visiting Periods

  • Nov - Dec 2022: Dr. Jonas Asprion at Tool Temp AG, Sulgen (CH) - within the ELO-X framework
    • Working on estimation and dual control for temperature control unit, together with Léo Simpson.
  • Oct - Nov 2023: Prof. Alberto Bemporad at IMT Lucca (IT) - within the ELO-X framework
  • Jan - May 2024: Dr. Stefano Di Cairano at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge (MA, USA) - within the ELO-X framework
  • Jun - Aug 2024: Dr. Sven Leyffer at Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont (IL, USA) -  within the ELO-X framework

Research Interests

  • Mixed-integer nonlinear programming and applications to optimal control
  • Intersection of nonlinear model predictive control and learning methods
  • Programming and open-source software
  • Dual control and optimization-based estimation

News

  • April 2026: "Rollout Then Optimize: A One-Step Newton Refinement of Learned Policies for Nonlinear Model Predictive Control" A. Ghezzi, R. Reiter, K. Baumgaertner, A. Bemporad, M. Diehl. Accepted for presentation at European Control Conference 2026.
  • March 2026: "A sequential Benders-based Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming Algorithm and its Implementation in the CAMINO Toolbox". A. Ghezzi *, W. Van Roy *, S. Sager, M. Diehl,  (* equal contribution). https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.11786 under review

Software projects

Teaching / Thesis

  • Together with Yunfan Gao I supervise the Race Car Control Lab (SoSe 2026)
  • Together with Jakob Harzer and Mohammed Hababeh I supervise the Flight Control Lab (WiSe 2022/23)
  • I am happy to supervise Master (or Bachelor) Theses (or semester projects) about:
    • control of quadcopters also in tethered flight (see some experiments here)
    • algorithms for solving mixed-integer nonlinear programs (expanding CAMINO)
       

Links

Publications