Academic and professional career:
1993: Degree in Electronic Engineering (107/110) at the University of Padova
1997: Doctorate in Electronic Engineering and Industrial Informatics at the University of Padova
1998-2000: Design engineer at a company producing electric drives.
2000-2015: University researcher, Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Padova
Since 2015: Associate Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Padova
In the first years of my activity I was mainly interested in the sector of electric drives and industrial automation. In particular I studied strategies for the control of the induction motor and the DC brushless motor. I also investigated the use of artificial neural networks for the synthesis of adaptive controllers and for the frequency analysis of distorted waveforms.
Subsequently I became interested in the problem of recharging the on-board batteries of electric vehicles and in this area I carried out research concerning conventional battery chargers. I analyzed the potential of the latter in implementing "Vehicle to Home" (V2H) technology.In addition to the exchange of active power, I also considered that of reactive power for the creation of ancillary services to support the electricity grid. I then undertook the study of non-contact power transmission systems, known as "Wireless power transfer systems" (WPTSs), used as battery chargers and I concentrated mainly on inductive systems, in which the power exchange occurs through coupling between two facing coils. Initially I studied the static WPTSs in depth and was interested in the sizing of the coupling coils and compensation networks, the definition of the architecture of the static converters present in the apparatus and the related control strategies, both at the level of the single converter and complete apparatus. In conducting this activity I developed several models for the simulation of these systems and I created a small prototype on which I conducted and still conduct several experiments in the SEAV laboratory of the DII. Subsequently I considered dynamic WPT systems. The operating principles of the latter are the same as the static ones, but the need to maintain a power flow as constant as possible while the mutual position of the coils varies requires adequately designing the coils themselves and developing control algorithms with more dynamic thrust and greater robustness with respect to parametric variations. I am currently considering bidirectional WPT systems, i.e. capable of implementing the V2H technology that I had previously studied in conventional battery chargers.
In collaboration with researchers from other universities, I am also studying algorithms to automate the sizing and optimization of the compensation networks of WPT systems once some operating specifications such as the supply voltage and the minimum requirements for transferred power and efficiency have been established. .
My research activity is demonstrated by almost 140 publications, of which more than 100 are indexed on Scopus.

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