Programming of energy efficient, secure and autonomous computing systems and cyber-physical systems

Mission: Develop efficient, secure and autonomous computing and cyber-physicals systems. In particular, the research focuses on:

  • Mobile autonomous systems: drones, vehicles, robots
  • Monitored critical infrastructures: buildings/roads, energy systems
  • Large-scale and high-performance computing systems

Specifically, the research concerns the development and optimization of cyber-physical, neuromorphic and high-performance systems, using techniques at the embedded, edge and HPC device level. The approach considers holistically the intersection between architectural components, software layers, applications, and the system. The main aspects concern the optimization of performance, energy/thermal consumption and cybersecurity across the entire data processing chain generated by these systems, from the sensor/actuator to the HPC/cloud.

The techniques mainly concern:

  • Automatic generation and analysis of code using AI techniques (ex: language models)
  • HW/OS/firmware security support (e.g. IDS, control-flow integrity)
  • HW/OS/Middleware techniques for power management and thermal control of HPC systems
  • DeepRL control techniques for autonomous drones and robots
  • AI algorithms for anomaly detection of safety critical systems (HPC, civil infrastructures) and autonomous systems (ex: autonomous robots, vehicles)
  • Neuromorphic systems and algorithms (e.g. Spiking Neural Networks) on edge devices
  • Methods for rapid prototyping (Hardware-in-the-loop, Software-in-the-Loop)
  • IoT data security and certification (blockchain, zero-knowledge proof)
  • HW/OS/Run-time/firmware support for energy, thermal, and power consumption sustainability of high-performance computing systems (Green Computing, Green HPC)
  • Methods for designing efficient high-performance computing systems
  • New architectures for high-performance computing systems (RISC-V and heterogeneous HPC)

Applications/verticals:

  • Autonomous drones and robots
  • Structural Health monitoring
  • Sustainable High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems
  • Digital twin of energy systems

Examples of search products:

  • DeepLLVM/DeepCodeGraph
  • ControlPulp
  • EXAMON
  • TitanCFI
  • TitanSSL
  • Monte Cimone
  • RUAD

ERC Fields 

  • PE6_2 Computer systems, parallel/distributed systems, sensor networks, embedded systems, cyber-physical systems
  • PE6_3 Software engineering, operating systems, computer languages
  • PE6_6 Algorithms, distributed, parallel and network algorithms, algorithmic game theory
  • PE6_7 Artificial intelligence, intelligent systems, multi agent systems

Scientific coordinator: Prof. Andrea Acquaviva 

Faculty

Andrea Acquaviva

Full Professor

Francesco Barchi

Junior assistant professor (fixed-term)

Andrea Bartolini

Associate Professor

PhD Students and Research Fellows

Kashaf Ad Dooja

PhD Student

Giovanni Bambini

PhD Student

Research fellow

Nicola Elia

PhD Student

Grafika Jati

PhD Student

Junaid Ahmed Khan

PhD Student

Research fellow

Giacomo Madella

PhD Student

Research fellow

Teaching tutor

Sebastiano Mengozzi

PhD Student

Research fellow

Martin Molan

PhD Student

Alberto Musa

PhD Student

Research fellow

Samuel Zanella

Research fellow