Bio

B.S. ​Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, 2006M.S. ​Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, 2008Ph.D. ​Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, 2012Post-Doc ​Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania/ PRECISE Center, 2015

"My research focuses on increasing autonomy, resiliency, and security of mobile robotic systems and cyber-physical systems."

Nicola Bezzo, Associate Professor

Nicola Bezzo is an Associate Professor with the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia. Prior to joining UVA in January 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the PRECISE Center, in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) where he worked on topics related to robotics and cyber-physical systems security. He received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of New Mexico where he focused on the development of theories for motion planning of aerial and ground robotic systems under communication constraints. Prior to his Ph.D. he received both M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering with honors (summa cum laude) from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Nicola was the recipient of the 2010 Gold Medal from the Politecnico School of Engineering and the 2011 Best Graduate Student Service Award from the University of New Mexico. He has received the 2016 Robotics and Automation Magazine Best Paper Award and the Best Paper Award at the 2014 CPSWeek International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems.

Awards

  • Robotics and Automation Magazine Best Paper Award 2016
  • Best Paper Award at the CPSWeek International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems 2014
  • Best Graduate Student Service Award from the University of New Mexico 2011
  • Gold Medal from the Politecnico School of Engineering 2010

Research Interests

  • CPS Cyber-security
  • Autonomous Mobile Robots (aerial and ground robotics)
  • Autonomy and Controls/Control Systems
  • Resilience in CPS
  • Heterogeneous Robotic Systems
  • Co-design and Rapid Prototyping of Robotic Systems
  • Human-robot Interaction
  • Optimization Models and Methods
  • Machine Learning
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems

Selected Publications

  • Design and implementation of attack-resilient cyber-physical systems. IEEE Control Systems Magazine. April 2017. M. Pajic, J. Weimer, N. Bezzo, O. Sokolsky, G. Pappas, and I. Lee.
  • Online planning for energy- efficient and disturbance-aware uav operations. In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016), pages 5027–5033. IEEE, 2016. N. Bezzo, K. Mohta, C. Nowzari, I. Lee, V. Kumar, and G. J. Pappas.
  • A stochastic approach for attack resilient uav motion planning. In American Control Conference (ACC 2016), pages 1366–1372. IEEE, 2016. N. Bezzo, J. Weimer, Y. Du, S. H. Son, O. Sokolsky, and I. Lee.
  • Robot makers: The future of digital rapid design and fabrication of robots. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 22(4):27–36, 2015. N. Bezzo, A. Mehta, C. D. Onal, and M. T. Tolley.
  • Rapid co-design of electro- mechanical specifications for robotic systems. In ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2015), 2015. N. Bezzo, M.Piccoli, P. Gebhard, V. Kumar, M. Yim, and I. Lee.
  • Robustness of attack-resilient state estimators. In Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), 2014 ACM/IEEE International Conference on, pages 163–174, 2014. M. Pajic, J. Weimer, N. Bezzo, P. Tabuada, O. Sokolsky, I. Lee, and G. Pappas.
  • A cooperative heterogeneous mobile wireless mechatronic system. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 19(1):20–31, 2014. N. Bezzo, B. Griffin, P. Cruz, J. Donahue, R. Fierro, and J. Wood.
  • Attack resilient state estimation for autonomous robotic systems. In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), pages 3692–3698. IEEE, 2014. N. Bezzo, J. Weimer, M. Pajic, O. Sokolsky, G. J. Pappas, and I. Lee.
  • Roslab – a modular programming environment for robotic applications. In ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), page 214, 2014. N. Bezzo, J. Park, A. King, P. Geghard, R. Ivanov, and I. Lee.
  • Toward realistic coordination of connected hetero- geneous robotic systems. In International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), Baltimore, MD, November 8-11 2012. N. Bezzo, M. Anderson, R. Fierro, and J. Wood.
  • A decentralized connectivity strategy for mobile router swarms. In Proc. of The 18th World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Milan, Italy, 30 August 2011. N. Bezzo, Y. Yuan, R. Fierro, and Y. Mostofi.
  • Swarming of mobile router networks. In American Control Conference (ACC), pages 4685–4690, San Francisco, CA, 01 July 2011. N. Bezzo and R. Fierro. Swarming of mobile router networks
  • A disjunctive programming approach for motion planning of mobile router networks. International Journal of Robotics and Automation, 26(1), 2011. N. Bezzo, R. Fierro, A. Swingler, and S. Ferrari.
  • Tethering of mobile router networks. In American Control Conference (ACC), pages 6828–6833, 2010. N. Bezzo and R. Fierro.
Google Scholar
ResearchGate

Courses Taught

  • Simulation Moldeling Spring 2017, 2018
  • Autonomous Mobile Robots Fall 2016, 2017, 2018

Featured Grants & Projects

  • Development of Control-Aware Cyber Techniques for Attack-Resilient Industrial Control & Combat Systems

    $ 320,000; 10/01/2016 – 09/30/2019

  • Fully Autonomous Secure and Safe Transport (FASST)

    $ 75,000; 08/29/2016 – 05/15/2017

  • Cybersecurity Analysis - Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

    $ 75,000; 08/29/2016 – 05/15/2017

  • Graduate Curriculum in Robotics and Society

    $ 58,000; 06/09/2016 – 05/15/2017

  • Attack-Resilient Autonomous Vehicles DARPA High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HAMCS) Program subcontract

    $ 50,000; 01/01/2016 — 02/28/2017