During the 2023/2024 academic year, we organized three events aimed at promoting collaboration among doctoral students. These events included information meetings followed by convivial moments, thus creating opportunities both to update on ongoing activities and to encourage the informal exchange of ideas and experiences between participants.
Additionally, our students had the opportunity to participate in numerous conferences, during which they presented a variety of papers. Active participation in such conferences not only allowed them to share their work and research, but also fostered the development of meaningful relationships with other researchers and similar research institutions. These connections have been essential to foster collaboration on research projects of European scope and beyond.
Below is a detailed report of what the students did during the year.
38th CYCLE
During the first year of the course, the following doctoral students of cycle 38 regularly attended the scheduled lessons and presented the thesis project, approved by the teaching body last October. Each doctoral student's web page contains year-end reports and publications.
• ARABANI SINA SHAHIDZADEH - Tutor: Prof. Licciardello - Research topic: “Running gears track friendliness assessment by using wayside measurements”.
• CHIA NGWAH ELVIS - Tutor: Prof. Persia - Research topic: “Upgrading Road Safety Assessments Methodologies based on Innovative Technologies”.
• DE PACE ALESSANDRA MARIA - Tutor: Prof. Crespi - Research topic: "Real-time estimation of the tropospheric delay through the application of the variometric approach to the troposphere".
• FEUDJIO TEZONG STEFFEL LUDIVIN - Tutor: Prof. Persia - Research topic: “Traffic conflict approach for road safety analysis”.
• MANSOURYAR SAEED (PNRR351) - Tutor: Prof. Fusco - Research topic: “Smart Multimodal Corridor: Development and implementation of intelligent traffic light control for bus priority systems using pre-signals”.
• ROBINSON MATTHEW - Tutor: Prof. Corazza - Research topic: “A novel assessment of the environmental impacts of water management technologies at bus garages”.
In particular:
- the doctoral student ROBINSON MATTHEW participated in the LIFEH2OBUS community project (LIFE21-ENV-IT-LIFEH2OBUS Project no.101074151) which aims to develop the study of water consumption mitigation techniques in the operation of urban public transport, presenting the work carried out at the following conferences of global importance: 2023 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2023 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe; and the 16th World Conference on Transport Research.
- The collaboration between the doctoral student ARABANI SINA SHAHIDZADEH and the doctoral student NADIA KAVIANI (36th cycle) for the carrying out of driving dynamics simulations in the context of the research "Track geometry monitoring towards predictive maintenance" (work presented at an international conference and accepted for publication).
37th CYCLE
During the second year of the course, the following doctoral students of cycle 37 participated in the planned activities, consisting of seminars on specialized topics held by Italian and foreign teachers. In October they sent and presented the update of the research project to the teaching staff. They also spent various periods away from home for scientific collaborations relating to their thesis, for participation in winter or summer schools and national and international conferences. Each doctoral student's web page contains year-end reports and publications.
• ALAKBARLI EMIN - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Risk Analysis for Multiple Hazards in Underground Systems."
• BABAPOURDIJOJIN MAHNAZ (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Citizen Travel Habits: a new solution to encourage sustainable commuting and facilitate the assessment of mobility management policies".
• BERUTTI BERGOTTO MELISSA (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Smart Working: a decision support system for companies which incorporates its impacts on the city environment".
• FONDZENYUY STEPHEN KOME (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Persia - Research topic: "Advancing knowledge on speed management and developing a speed prediction model for a mixed traffic".
• GALUPPI MARTA (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Lombardi - Research topic: "Security solutions for Smart tunnels: green island, technical devices and technological systems for sustainable development objectives".
• HAMOUDZADEH ALIREZA (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Crespi - Research topic: "Earth Observation big data exploitation for water reservoirs and glaciers continuous monitoring".
• HOSSEINI SEYEDHASSAN - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Trip phase recognition and Transport Mode detection via machine learning algorithms".
• HUSEYNOV ARIF (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Decision Support Systems for Transport Demand Management applications in Corporate Area".
• IPPOLITO NICOLA - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Last-mile-logistic Platform for multi-companies synchronization within urban areas".
• LAHIJANIAN ZAHRA (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Fusco - Research topic: "Development and implementation of a calibration method for traffic simulation models".
• MASTROROSA SARA - Tutor: Prof. Munafò - Research topic: "Integration of SAR and optical data for the semi-automatic monitoring of land consumption".
• MOHAMMADI MOSTAFA - Tutor: Prof. Colombaroni - Research topic: "A Multi-Period Dynamic Electric Vehicle Production-Routing Problem in a Supply Chain Considering Energy Consumption".
• PELUSO PAOLO - Tutor: Prof. Cantisani - Research topic: "Proactive approach to the analysis of road infrastructure safety by examining the operating conditions of traffic and the territorial context.".
• RAHMANIFAR GOLMAN (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Fusco - Research topic: "An Integrated Location and Routing Formulation for Cold Chain Logistics Network with Heterogeneous Customer Demand".
• SALEHI SALAR (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Enhancing Transportation Services for effortless Logistics Management".
• SHAH SYED HAMZA ALI (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Transport Modeling for Mega-Projects: An application on futuristic, carbon emission free, sustainable, 5-minute City of NEOM".
• VARGHESE KEN KOSHY (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Gentile - Research topic: "Transportation: Conformal Prediction, Uncertainty Quantification, and Interpretable Frameworks".
• VITA LORENZO (PON) - Tutor: Prof. Loprencipe - Research topic: "Multi-criteria approach for the optimization of processes for the construction of green roads".
In particular:
• The doctoral students ALAKBARLI EMIN and GALUPPI MARTA successfully participated in the Tunnel Fire Dynamics doctoral course organized by the University of Lund.
• Doctoral student HOSSEINI SEYEDHASSAN won the award: “Best Paper in the 22nd International Multi-Conference Reliability and Statistics in Transportation and Communication”.
• PhD student FONDZENYUY STEPHEN KOME has participated in several European projects (Drive2theFuture, Trendline, Safe System Working Group), national projects (Transport Modeling for Lazio) and African projects (Masters in transport Planning in Cameroon, Uganda road safety short course). Furthermore, you collaborated with the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility on Speed Management research in low-and-middle income countries. Finally, she received a grant from the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety to implement a road safety program (https://claimingourspace.org/youths-for-postcrash-care).
• The doctoral student PELUSO PAOLO took part in the 2021 University Project "Reliability of behavioral models and effectiveness of speed limitations for improving road safety: analysis using Floating Car Data and high-performance surveys". The research activity was partly disclosed with the publication of a scientific article in an international journal.
• PhD student LAHIJANIAN ZAHRA participated in the CAV project, Development of Highway Traffic Simulation Model
• The doctoral student BABAPOURDIJOJIN MAHNAZ has i) participated in the third-party project "Study of the demand for the sizing of public transport in relation to the Jubilee events" (CIG Code 9653319AD6, Award Code SEFNS23006); ii) collaborated in the presentation of the proposal for the additional 39th cycle grants (won) promoted by INPS (December 2022), topic "Agile working and systematic travel: the impact of smart working on sustainable mobility and the environment"; iii) won the ICE 28/2023 prot.n. competition. 2895 as assistant for the Sustainable Transport Planning course.
There have been various collaborations with companies, due to the strong presence of PON grants within the 37th cycle (PTV Group, Movesion srl, CTLup srl, Moving Projects srl, Almaviva, SIA).
Finally, the following doctoral students have benefited from mobility or will benefit from it in the first months of 2024:
• SALEHI SALAR, TU Delft (4 months 2024)
• HOSSEINI SEYEDHASSAN, Luxembourg University (7 months)
• FONDZENYUY STEPHEN KOME, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Travaux Publics Yaoundé (6 months)
• GALUPPI MARTA (2 months + 1 month 2024), DTU
• LAHIJANIAN ZAHRA (6 months, 2024), Technical University of Munich
• MOHAMMADI MOSTAFA (6 months, 2024), Eindhoven university of technology
• RAHMANIFAR GOLMAN (6 months, 2024), Eindhoven university of technology
• IPPOLITO NICOLA (4 months), TU Delft
Numerous collaborations between students, culminating in several publications in journals and presentations at conferences as reported in the IRIS catalogue.
36th CYCLE
Some 36th cycle PhD students have obtained a legal extension due to Covid, therefore we can distinguish two groups of students:
• Standard path: they submitted the thesis to the reviewers and presented their work in front of the teaching body on January 24th, which admitted them to the final exam
• Path with extension: they are finalizing the thesis and will submit it on infostud by February 28th to take the final exam in May.
Students who will discuss the final exam in February:
• Amendola Matteo (tutor Prof. Augusto Mazzoni), thesis title: Low-cost GNSS Integrated Solution for Structural Health Monitoring
• Bruno Salvatore (tutor Prof. Giuseppe Loprencipe), title of the thesis: Low-cost monitoring systems for the diagnosis of
urban road paving
• Erdinc Gizem (tutor Prof. Gaetano Fusco), thesis title: Two-stage fuzzy traffic state identifier
• Luciani Giulia (tutor Prof. Claudia Mattogno), thesis title: COMPLEX HERITAGE Urbanized deltas between waters, heritage and cities
• Vitelaru Elena Catalina (35th cycle, tutor Prof. Luca Persia), thesis title: FRACTIONAL VEHICLE OWNERSHIP AND REVENUE GENERATION THROUGH BLOCKCHAIN ASSET TOKENIZATION
Students who will take the final exam in May:
• Anastasia Azarko (tutor Prof. Luca Persia), thesis title: Impact assessment of automated transportation with the focus on a comparison
between automated road freight transport and automated waterborne transport.
• Mohamed Eldafrawi (tutor Prof. Guido Gentile), thesis title: Dynamic Demand Estimation Using Big Data in Real World Traffic Modeling
and Ride Sourcing Applications
• Nadia Kaviani (tutor Prof. Riccardo Licciardello), thesis title: Predictive Maintenance for Track Geometry Monitoring using Measured Data from Commercial Trains
Doctoral student Samarth Ghoslya has an active joint supervision with CY Cergy Paris Université, France, which requested the extension of the course by one year (to align it with French legislation)
Finally, the following doctoral students took advantage of the mobility:
• Giulia Luciani, KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), Gdansk University of Technology (Gdansk), Universidade Lusofona (Lisbon) (3 months)
• Mohamed Eldafrawi, DTU (11 months)
• Nadia Kaviani, Norwegian University of Science and Technology / Birmingham University (UKRRIN) (11 months)