The Department

Following the recent global economic crisis, unforseen and radical changes have taken place in the organisation of social, economic and cultural systems worldwide. Such changes have been at times both the cause and the effect of rapid developments in science and technology and education, and have entailed an increasing crossover between all the scientific disciplines. As a result, the role and the mission of the university as an institution, in particular the technical educational establishments, have been critically revised.

Within such a dynamic situation, DAUIN (the Department of Control and Computer Science), has remained the natural location for research interests concerned with this increasing integration between numerous scientific disciplines, defining and delineating the emergent multidisciplinary scene from previously vertical methodologies and technologies. Indeed, this scene is itself characteristic of Control and Computer Science. In the monotonous repetition of ordinary actions carried out on a daily basis by humans and machines, themselves united within an extensive and complex socio-technological system, lies the impetus to consider the potential of any natural or artificial phenomenon once it is supplied with computational intelligence. The breadth of the research and technological activity at DAUIN may therefore be seen in the multiplicity of the phenomena available, determining this rapid and dynamic evolution in information and complex systems. The culture of the department is in fact neatly represented by the two terms Control and Computer Science, which already integrate two historically distinct disciplines. The ongoing research at the department may be seen as the very intersection of the disciplines described by these terms.

DAUIN is therefore the university’s reference point in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), studying the methodologies and technologies that enable the management, treatment and transmission of information. The ambit of the department is manifest within the reference sectors of the ERC (European Research Council), where disciplines are grouped together with the aim of facilitating scientific research within the EU.

The ERC sectors related to the activities of the DAUIN research groups are the following:

PE6 Computer science and informatics: informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
- PE6_1 Computer architecture
- PE6_2 Database management
- PE6_3 Formal methods
- PE6_4 Graphics and image processing
- PE6_5 Human computer interaction and interface
- PE6_6 Informatics and information systems
- PE6_7 Theoretical computer science including quantum information
- PE6_8 Intelligent systems
- PE6_9 Scientific computing
- PE6_10 Modelling tools
- PE6_11 Multimedia
- PE6_12 Parallel and Distributed Computing
- PE6_13 Speech recognition
- PE6_14 Systems and software

PE7 Systems and communication engineering: electronic, communication, optical and systems engineering
- PE7_1 Control engineering
- PE7_4 Simulation engineering and modelling
- PE7_5 Systems engineering, sensorics, actorics, automation
- PE7_9 Networks
- PE7_10 Man-machine-interfaces
- PE7_11 Robotics
- PE1_19 Teoria del controllo e ottimizzazione