Alberto Landi

Education
Laurea degree in Electrical Engineering, 1986. Awarded cum laude by the University of Genoa;
Ph.D (Doctoral degree) in Electrical Engineering, University of Pisa in 1991.

Position
1990–2000 Assistant Professor of Automatic Control, University of Pisa;
2000–2006 Associate Professor of Automatic Control, University of Pisa;
2006– Full Professor of Automatic Control, University of Pisa;
2008–2015 President of the Master’s Degree in “Robotics and Automation Engineering” , University of Pisa.
2016- 2022 Dean of the School of Engineering

Teaching Activity at University of Pisa (from 2001)
2001–2002 Automatic Control I (12 ECTS), Automatic Control II (12 ECTS)
2002–2003 Industrial Automation for Mechanical students(6 ECTS)
2002–2007 Fundaments of Automatic Control for electronic students (6 ECTS),Fundaments of Automatic Control for biomedical students (6 ECTS), Biomechatronics (6 ECTS)
2007–2011 Process Control (10 ECTS)
2008–2014 Fundaments of Automatic control for electronic and biomedical students (6 ECTS), Physiological Cybernetics (6 ECTS)
2013-2014 Digital and Process Control
2016-2022 Process Control (6 ECTS)
2015- Fundaments of Automatic control for electronic and biomedical students (6 ECTS),
2018- Physiological Cybernetics (6 ECTS)

Main Scientific Interests
Physiological Cybernetics (i.e., Mathematical models of physiological systems for automatic control applications)
Innovative applications for high speed trains and motion control
Nonlinear identification and control

Link between Teaching Activities and Scientific Interests
Research interests in the past included, among others, motion control and techniques for robust model identification and parameter estimation of dynamical systems. This scientific background led to an applicative research phase in cooperation with Italian Railways, to solve problems due to the introduction of high speed trains in Italy. For his studies on the signal analysis and monitoring of overhead contact in pantograph-catenary systems, he was awarded from Italian Institution of Railways Engineers (CIFI) in 2002 and in two different years (2004 and 2007) from the Railway Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers of London.
From 2004, most of the recent research activity of Alberto Landi is focused on a new challenge, the study of ‘physiological cybernetics’, defined as the application of automatic control theory to physiological systems. Research activity of Alberto Landi moved from modelling and monitoring systems for railways applications, to the development of analytical models of physical and chemical biologic systems, in order to describe and predict their dynamics, with the ambitious goal to apply a mathematical framework for helping medical diagnostic techniques and for testing new therapeutic protocols.
It has led to interesting results in modeling and control of different physiological systems. For instance, the results obtained in the studies of sleep slow oscillations in EEG, demonstrate how the past experience gained in a different field – signal analysis in railways – was extremely useful also in physiological studies. Furthermore, the studies of new models describing the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) infection, and the applications of predictive control theory to a model-based therapeutic optimization, is now carefully investigated.

Publications
He authored –or cohautored– more than 150 papers in International Journals or Conference Proceedings.