People
Faculty Members

ANDREA CASTELLETTI
Lab Head - Full Professor

MATTEO GIULIANI
Assistant Professor (senior)
Matteo Giuliani is assistant professor in the Environmental Intelligence Lab. He graduated with a double MSc degree in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino in 2010, and obtained the Diploma of the Alta Scuola Politecnica — V cycle in 2011. He received a PhD in Information Technology from Politecnico di Milano in 2014, after a visiting period at Penn State University (PA, USA). He was then post-doctoral research fellow and, since November 2016, he is assistant professor in the Department of Electronics Information and Bioengineering of Politecnico di Milano. From 2018 to 2020, he was Academic Guest at ETH Zurich for a collaboration with the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research Supply of Electricity (SCCER-SoE). The primary focus of his research is the integrated management of water resources in complex engineering systems involving multiple actors and exposed to evolving multisectoral demands and global change; his main research areas include multi-objective optimization and control algorithms, decision-making under uncertainty, machine learning and multi-agent systems.

SANDRA RICART
Assistant Professor (junior)
Dr. Sandra Ricart is a junior assistant professor in the Environmental Intelligence Lab. As a human-environment geographer, she was granted in 2020 with a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action post-doctoral fellowship to develop the MODFABE project at the EI Lab. She received her bachelor’s in Geography and master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Girona, Spain, and a Ph.D. in Experimental Sciences and Sustainability at the same institution. Her research interests include climate change perceived impacts and adaptative capacity through stakeholder analysis and behaviour modelling, together with the management and governance of water resources in socio-ecological systems from social-learning. Sandra co-authored more than thirty-five publications indexed in WoS and Scopus journals, attended more than fifty international conferences, and participated in several international and national research projects, while collaborating with universities and research centres from Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Since 2017 she is lecturer at the Masters in Planning and management of natural risks at the University of Alicante (Spain).
Research team

WYATT ARNOLD
Post Graduate Research Fellow
Wyatt Arnold is a research fellow at the EI Lab. He received his MSc degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California Davis in 2021. Prior to joining the EI Lab, Wyatt worked as a water resources engineer for the California Department of Water Resources on climate change vulnerability and adaptation planning for the State’s regional water supply system and watershed-scale multi-objective assessments of flood and drought risk. His research interests include hydro-economic modeling of multi-reservoir conjunctive use systems, optimization under uncertain non-stationarity, and formulation of robust and flexible plans for food-water-energy security and sustainability.

GUIDO ASCENSO
Post Doc Research Fellow
Guido Ascenso is a post-doctoral researcher at the EI Lab in the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano. His academic career includes a BSc in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and an MSc in Sports Biomechanics from Robert Gordon University; he is currently waiting to receive his PhD in Applied Deep Learning from Manchester Metropolitan University. His current research focuses on the application of deep learning methods to model extreme events like cyclones. His research interests also include computer vision, shortcut learning, and causality.

ANGELO CARLINO
Post Doc Research Fellow

ANDREA FICCHÌ
Post Doc Research Fellow
Andrea Ficchì is a post-doctoral researcher at the EI Lab at Politecnico di Milano. He received a MSc degree in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2013, after an internship at IRSTEA (now INRAE) in Montpellier and a visiting period at TU Delft on real-time control of water reservoirs using ensemble weather forecasts. He received a PhD in Hydrology from University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris) in 2017, after working as a researcher at IRSTEA in Antony (France) on the development of hydrological models across sub-daily temporal scales for flood forecasting applications. From 2017 to 2021, he has worked as part of the FATHUM project at the University of Reading and as a visiting scientist at ECMWF, contributing to the use and evaluation of a global flood prediction system (the Copernicus EMS – Global Flood Awareness System) to support humanitarian early actions across sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Mozambique and Uganda. His main research areas include hydro-meteorological forecasts, decision-making under uncertainty, forecast-based action, hydrological modelling, African hydrology, and climate teleconnections.

PAOLO GAZZOTTI
Post Doc Research Fellow
Dr. Paolo Gazzotti is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the EI Lab. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering in the same institution. His research focuses on Integrated Assessment Models and Agent-Based Modeling techniques to assess optimal climate change mitigation policies and explore negotiation strategies in international climate agreements.

ELENA MATTA
Post Doc Research Fellow

MARCO MICOTTI
Senior research associate

VERONICA PIURI
Post Graduate Research Fellow
Veronica Piuri is a research fellow at the EI Lab. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, respectively in 2019 and 2022. Her research focuses on integrated water management strategies in arid river basins and the integration of adaptation measures for water stress management.

MATTEO SANGIORGIO
Post Doc Research Fellow

GUANG YANG
Post Doc Research Fellow
Guang Yang is a post-doctoral researcher at the EI Lab. He received his Ph.D. in Hydrology and Water Resources from Wuhan University (China) in 2018 and was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Water Resources, China, after a visiting period at Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). From 2018 to 2020, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). His research focuses on multi-objective water resources operations, adaptive reservoir operations under climate change, and decision support systems based on statistical learning.
PHD Students

WENJIN HAO
Phd student (XXXVI cycle)

TERESA BONSERIO
Phd student (XXXVIII cycle)
Teresa Bonserio is a PhD student at the EI Lab. She received her bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Politecnico di Bari in 2019 and her master’s degree in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2021. In the same year, she obtained a double degree with Polytechnic University of Turin from taking part in the XVI cycle of Alta Scuola Politecnica. Teresa’s research will address the impact of global climate and energy policies on regional African contexts through the use of multi-scale integrated assessment models.

FILIPPO DAINELLI
Phd student (XXXVIII cycle)
Filippo Dainelli is a PhD student at the EI Lab. He received his bachelor’s degree in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2018 and his master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Delft University of Technology in 2020. Filippo’s research will address the feasibility of the application of the GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) learning framework for the forecast of Extra Tropical Cyclones.

DAVIDE SPINELLI
Phd student (XXXVIII cycle)
Davide Spinelli is a PhD student at the EI Lab. He received his bachelor’s degree in Automation Engineering and his master’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, respectively in 2017 and 2020. Along with his master, he also obtained the Alliance4Tech certificate after visiting periods at UCL and TU Berlin. Davide’s research is performed in collaboration with the Consorzio dell’Adda and will focus on providing more efficient and resilient real-time strategic management solutions for water resources systems under changing and more challenging climate conditions.
Visiting PHD Students

XIAOXING ZHANG
China Agricultural University
Xiaoxing Zhang is a visiting PhD student from the College of Water Resources & Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University. She received her MSc degree from Sichuan University. She is interested in water resource management under uncertainties. Now her research mainly focuses on optimal agricultural water resource allocation under multi-uncertainties in arid and semi-arid areas.
Master Students
Past theses of eiLab students are available HERE.