Adriano Mele

Nationality: Italian

EPFL SB SPC-TCV
PPB 119 (Bâtiment PPB)
Station 13
1015 Lausanne

EPFL SB SPC-TCV
PPB 119 (Bâtiment PPB)
Station 13
1015 Lausanne

I am a control engineer and plasma scientist at the Swiss Plasma Center of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
I am also Research Topic Coordinator in the EUROfusion Tokamak Exploitation WorkPackage, for the Research Topic 04: Physics-based machine generic systems for an integrated control of plasma discharge, and an Associate Editor in the Franklin Open journal.

In 2022-2023, I have been an Assistant Professor in Automatic Control at the University of Tuscia, Viterbo.
Before that, from 2019 to 2021, I have been a post-doctoral researcher at the CREATE consortium, host by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI) of the University of Napoli Federico II. The position was funded by an EUROfusion Engineering Grant for the development of diagnostic systems for the DTT device.

In the years 2015-2019, I've been enrolled in the Joint European Research Doctorate in Fusion Science and Engineering PhD programme, in co-supervision with the University of Padua. My main PhD research topic was the development of a flexible and robust control architecture for plasma magnetic control in tokamak reactors (read the full thesis).

My research interests include control systems for nuclear fusion reactors, data-driven and machine learning control applications and control theory in general.

Professionals experiences

Research Topic Coordinator

Research Topic Coordinator in the Tokamak Exploitation Workpackage for the topic RT04: Physics-based machine generic systems for an integrated control of plasma discharge

Education

Automatica

| Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale (Italian license to become Associate Professor)

2025 – 2026 Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca

Fusion Science and Engineering

| Control engineering applied to Nuclear Fusion experiments

2015 – 2019 Università degli Studi di Padova - Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Awards

Eurofusion Engineering Grant

Personal 3-years grant for the study of diagnostic systems for the DTT tokamak

2019

Teaching & PhD

Courses

Control and Operation of Tokamaks

PHYS-748

This course treats the main issues in operation and control of a tokamak. Control-oriented models are derived and controllers are designed using techniques from modern control theory. Operational limits are discussed as well as state-of-the-art research questions for future reactors.