I am an aspiring full-stack scientist, currently as a PhD student with Raff D'Andrea and Simone Schürle at ETH Zürich. Ever since I was a kid, I have been broadly interested in computer science, physics, robotics and mathematical puzzles. I love science and engineering.
I completed my M.Sc. in Robotics, Systems and Control from ETH Zürich in 2023 with a focus on optimization and optimal transport. For my work I was awarded ETH medal, Willi Studer Prize, and the ASRO/SVO award.
I used to play football, now I enjoy running (marathon time: 3h 30 min), cycling (on the Alps), skying, and much more. But I recently got obsessed with Bachata... Otherwise, I like to read, and build things.
[2018]Inuru's patented electronic films enables electronic labels and packaging for consumer marketing. There, I:
Designed and implemented the algorithm to automate the design of the electronic circuit (Java, AWS).
Implemented the backend for the web application to input the packaging information (Java, AWS)
[2017] I worked at ISEL on a Java application dedicated to the problem of medical support in the area of nephrology diagnostic, more specifically on the Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) diagnosis.
I also did some freelancing; some examples:
[2019] PlanetAutomation, Udine: I developed the web service (NodeJS, AWS) for scheduling and tracking the maintenances on industrial machines.
[2018] BLE beacons for indoor navigation: I developed the software infrastructure (NodeJS, AWS, Kotlin) for an indoor navigation system based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons technology. The system has been deployed during a local event in Brașov, Romania.
[2018]Torneo delle frazioni di Buia, Udine: I developed an Android (Java) app to handle and support a yearly football tournament in Udine, Italy, with backend based on AWS (S3, Cognito, Lambda).
[2017]Vodafone EICMA eBike, Udine: I developed the Android application for the moto presented by Vodafone at EICMA 2017 (Java).
pet projects
... I will slowly add all the others ...
Tools. I implemented my minimal version of the Robot Operating System (ROS), TinyROS, and a tool for logging I use in every project lately, Goggles.
LLM misc. Some random projects I worked on with LLMs: A chrome extension to turn your conversations with ChatGPT into flashcards, a let me google that for you powered by LLM.
Trivia Patente In high school (2016-2018), with Luigi Donadel and Gabriel Ciulei, we built an app to prepare for the Italian driving license theory exam by playing with your friends. We were bored of studying the theory exam, and we thought this would have made it easier... iOS app in Swift, Android app in Java, backend in Python, and many cool javascript daemons for when we had no users, lol. (we got to 100, eventually... lesson: iterate with your customers!)
I think reading is one of the best thing you can do. I started to collect my reading picks for each year, but I figured I could simply collect all (approximately) the books I own in this page (work in progress...).
I have not read all of these, and I highlighted in green then ones I particularly enjoyed for a reason or another. They are listed in no particular order.
2024
Elementary fluid dynamics (Acheson), The art of doing science and engineering (Hamming), Biology (Campbell), Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned (Stanley, Lehman), Lessons of History (Durant).
2023
Optimization by Vector Space methods (Luenberger), Variational Analysis (Rockafellar), Gradient Flows (Ambrosio, Gigli and Savaré), The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Allen), Entangled Life (Sheldrake), How To Be a Founder (Bentinck), The defining decade (Jay), Radical Candor (Scott).
I am continuously looking for motivated students interested in working with me. You can check out what some students had to say about me in their acknowledgement sections at the bottom of the page 🤗.
Feel free to reach out with your transcripts and a brief description of a project you have worked on.
Completed students projects:
Jan A. Kamm, Bachelor Thesis - ongoing (2025).
Francesco Banelli, Semester Project - ongoing (2025).
Alan Bonomi, Semester Project - ongoing (2025).
Max Stoll, Semester Project - ongoing (2025).
Francesco Banelli and Alan Bonomi, ADMM for PIV Refinement (2025).
Francesco and Alan worked on implementing an ADMM-based algorithm for PIV refinement as part of their Advanced Topic in Control class project, resulting in a publication.
Francesco Banelli and Alan Bonomi, Flow Gym and Synthpix (2025).
Francesco and Alan contributed to the development of Flow Gym and SynthPix during their Perception for Learning and Robotics class project, resulting in two publications and a third in preparation.
Oscar Von Löhneysen, Semi-Explicit MPC with Hard-Constrained Neural Networks. (2025)
Oscar worked on implementing and testing the Pinet architecture for model predictive control, showcasing its application on several physical system, including the magic box.
Fabian Weber, Design and realization of a tabletop water channel. (2025)
Fabian contributed to the design and realization of the version 2.0 of the tabletop water channel used in our fluids experiments. He is joining Raff's group as a research assistant!
Alain Schöbi, Distributionally Robust Linear Quadratic Regulator. (2025)
During his master thesis, Alain joined our project on distributionally robust control, contributing substantially to the development of theoretical results and numerical algorithms. We are working towards a publication of his master thesis, and he is joining Daniel Kuhn's group for his PhD!
Anthony N. Czubarow, The magic box. (2025)
Anthony worked on realizing the first prototype of the magic box, a physical system that will create wonder when completed ;)
The work has been submitted for publication, and he is joining Raff's group in January 2026 for his PhD!
Nicola Taddei, The 1D ARC challenge. (2025)
Nicola worked on the ARC challenge, implementing and testing several algorithms to solve a 1D version of the problem. He is going to do his master thesis with me as well!
Maximilian Stralz, Baselines for fluids control. (2025)
Max contributed to the proof of concept of the baseline collection pipeline for our fluids control experiment. He joined Gioele Zardini's group for his master thesis at MIT after this project!
Philip E. Pawlowsky, Real-time 3D flow estimation. (2025)
Philip contributed to the ongoing project on real-time 3D flow estimation... More details soon!
Alessandro B. Villanueva, Analysis of a tabletop water channel. (2024)
Alessandro analyzed a first version of the tabletop water channel used in our fluids experiments.
Youran Wu, Automatic seeding density control for a tabletop water channel. (2025)
Youran contributed to a proof of concept of a system to automatically regulate the seeding density in a tabletop water channel, enabling high-quality flow visualization for fluid dynamics experiments.
Martin Gadea, Learning diffusion at lightspeed: An application to single-cell dynamics prediction. (2023)
Martin's work was part of the Learning diffusion at lightspeed project, which resulted in a oral at NeurIPS 2024 (top 0.39%).
Teaching positions:
Head TA for the ETH Zürich class Programming and Optimal Control (2023-2024) by Raff. I was responsible for the material, exercises, and exam. The class grew substantially over the years, from ~200 students in 2023 to more than 450 in 2025. I worked with an amazing team:
Teaching Assistant for the Linear Algebra class (2020) in Udine.
Working with me in the words of some of my students:
Anthony: My deepest thanks go to my supervisor, Antonio Terpin, whose mentorship has shaped this thesis in more ways than I can count. Time and again, he reminded me that curiosity should guide us to push boundaries and approach problems with an open mind, an ethos reflected in his own openness, creativity, and formidable analytical insight that allowed ideas to truly flourish. His feedback was never mere correction but transformation, clarifying and elevating my work in ways beyond measure. Beyond this, I am fortunate to call Antonio not only a mentor but also a friend, one who cared deeply about my growth not just as a researcher but as a person, and for that, I am especially grateful.
Fabian: Working with Antonio as supervisor was a privilege. His feedback was consistently precise, swift, and essential. Nothing was considered complete until it met a high standard, and although this often meant additional labour (not always greeted with enthusiasm), the result would not have reached its current quality without his guidance.
Alain: I reached out to Antonio, with whom I had previously collaborated, and I am deeply grateful for his responsiveness, support, and trust in accepting to supervise my thesis and for offering me this opportunity. During my master's thesis, I was then jointly supervised by Nicolas and Antonio, whose continuous guidance, constructive feedback, and encouragement shaped the experience from the very beginning. While giving me the freedom to explore ideas independently, they were always there to offer help and insightful advice, creating an inspiring and motivating environment. Their support not only fostered my scientific development but also helped me grow as an individual. Their wit, insight, and passion for research inspired me greatly, and I will always cherish the exciting whiteboard sessions with Antonio–wishing there had been more!
Student Travel Grant for the American Control Conference (2022).
Among the four winners of the national-level selection contest for the Superiore dell'Università di Udine, awarded a five years full scholarship (2018).
Best student award at ITST JF Kennedy, Pordenone (2014, 2015, 2017).
Enlisted in the excelence records of the Italian Ministry of Education (2017).
Sport and School award at ITST JF Kennedy, Pordenone (2015).
