Members
Pierpaolo Boffi
Associate professor
Pierpaolo Boffi is Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Milan – Italy, where he is the responsible of the PoliCom – Optical Communications Lab. He received his laurea and Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. From 1995 to 2004 he was researcher at CoreCom. During 1997 he was Visiting Researcher at CALTECH, California. From 2005 to 2015 he was Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano. He has published more than 240 peer-reviewed papers in international journal & conference proceedings and is inventor of 17 patents. He is co-founder of the start-up company Cohaerentia. He was coordinator of the EU Horizon2020 project PASSION and now he is the Scientific Responsible for Politecnico di Milano of the EU HorizonEurope project QUID. From 2014 to 2019, he was Managing Board Member of the Italian Association for the Information and Communication Technology, coordinating the Specialist Group of Photonics and Electrooptics. He is member of the Editorial Board of “Photonic Network Communications” (Springer). His research activities have been always focused on advanced topics in the field of optical communications systems. His interests include high spectral efficiency optical systems based on multilevel and multicarrier formats and novel multiplexing techniques.
Paolo Martelli
Associate professor
Paolo Martelli received the Laurea degree (summa cum laude) in Electronics Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, in 1998 and 2005, respectively. He was a researcher at CoreCom (Consorzio Ricerche Elaborazione e Commutazione Ottica Milano), a consortium between Politecnico di Milano and Pirelli Cavi e Sistemi, from 1998 to 2008. He has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronics Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) of Politecnico di Milano since 2011. His research interests are in the field of optical communications. In particular, he is involved in studying and experimenting the optical transmission in both free-space and multimode fibers, based on the multiplexing/demultiplexing of the orbital angular momentum of the light.
Paola Parolari
Associate professor
Paola Parolari received the Laurea degree in Telecommunication Engineering (’97) and the Ph.D. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering (’01) from the Politecnico di Milano. From 2000 to 2008 she was a researcher in the Optical Communication System Laboratory of CoreCom. From 2009 she has been working as senior researcher in PoliCom, the Optical Communication Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, DEIB. She is now Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano, DEIB. She is one of the co-founder of the start-up company Cohaerentia. From 2011 to 2014 she has been WP leader of the FP7 EU project ERMES. From 2017 to 2021 she has been Project manager of the H2020 EU project PASSION.
Since 2019 she is Publicity Editor for the IEEE/ OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology. She has been/ is member of the Technical Program Committee of leading international conferences in the field of optical communications such as OFC, ECOC, ONDM, PSC, CLEO-PR. She is the lecturer of the BS class “Fundamentals of Communications and Internet”.
Her research interests include optical amplifiers, all-optical processing, highly spectrally efficient transmission systems, advanced modulation formats, access network technologies as WDM and OFDM PON, new architectures for the mobile fronthaul, partial MIMO-based Mode Division Multiplexing, coexistence of classical and QKD systems.
She has co-authored more than 160 papers in international journals and conferences and she holds 13 international patents.
Alberto Gatto
Assistant professor
Alberto Gatto was born in Milano, Italy, in 1982. He received the M.Sc. degree in telecommunication engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Information Technology both from the Politecnico di Milano in 2007 and 2011, respectively. He is now an Assistant Professor at the Optical Communication Laboratory of PoliCom, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB). From May 2013 to November 2014 he was a member of the Virgo team at the Laboratoire APC – Astroparticule et Cosmologie – Université Paris Diderot actively involved in the first observation of Gravitational Waves, where he contributed to realize a table-top Non-Gaussian Fabry-Perot Michelson interferometer for advanced Gravitational Wave detection.
His current research interest include the analysis of innovative short-reach optical communication systems based on low-cost and low-energy-consumption sources (VCSELs, RSOAs) with advanced modulation schemes (QPSK, M-QAM, OFDM) and direct modulation/direct detection techniques, the evaluation of a novel optical front-haul architecture based on Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for 5G applications and the analysis of properties of optical vortices in free-space optics and in multimode fiber transmission system for future mode division multiplexing systems.
He is co-author of more than 70 papers on international journals and conference proceedings and he is co-inventor of one patent on fiber-based mode division multiplexing systems.
Mëmëdhe Ibrahimi
Assistant professor
Mëmëdhe Ibrahimi is currently an Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano. He obtained an industrial Ph.D. in July 2022, and his Ph.D. thesis “Innovative Cross-Layer Optimization Techniques for the Design of Filterless and Wavelength-Switched Optical Networks” is a collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and SM-Optics. His research interests are in the field of cross-layer network optimization including the physical layer and the network layer, and machine learning applied to networking. He has experience in the design and optimization of coherent optical metro‑area and long‑haul networks, optical channel Quality‑of‑Transmission estimation, optical node architectures, and optical amplifiers.
Sebastian Troia
Assistant professor
Sebastian Troia is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and a Fulbright Fellow at the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas (USA) since 2022. In 2020, he earned his Ph.D. degree in Information Technology cum laude from Politecnico di Milano. In 2018, I became a partner at SWAN Networks, a spin-off of Politecnico di Milano that develops network orchestration and advanced algorithms for SDN and SD-WAN based networks. His current research interests are in the field of edge network softwarization and Machine Learning for communication networks. My work encompasses the development of intelligent control and orchestration plane architectures for SDN and SD-WAN in multi-layer (optical and IP) network scenarios. He participated in the European Projects H2020 Metro-Haul, NGI Atlantic, and FP7 Marie Curie MobileCloud. He served as an editor for the ITU Focus Group on Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G (FG-ML5G).
He co-authored more than 40 publications in international journals, conferences and book chapters. He is a member of the Technical Program Committee of the international conferences and workshops IEEE ICC and IEEE GLOBECOM. He has been a member of the Organizing Committee for IEEE HPSR 2019, DRCN 2020 and 2021, and IEEE NetSoft 2022. I am co-organizer of the Edge Network Softwarization (ENS) workshop series.
Marco Fasano
Research assistant
Marco Fasano obtained from Politecnico Di Milano the B.Sc. degree in Telecommunication Engineering in 2017 and the M.Sc. degree in Telecommunication Engineering in 2021, with a thesis on fiber optic interferometric sensors for acoustic emission detection. From December 2021 he is a research assistant at PoliCom, at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) of Politecnico di Milano. His current research interests include fiber optic interferometric sensors and OTDR-based distributed acoustic sensors for vibration monitoring.
Andrea Madaschi
Research assistant
Andrea Madaschi was born in Seriate in 1991. He received the M.Sc. degree in telecommunication engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2018 with a thesis entitled “The Faraday Effect in Optical Fiber for Current Sensor Applications”. From November 2018 to October 2020, he was a researcher at PoliCom, the Optical Communication Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, DEIB. He was actively involved in the study of new configurations of fiber optic sensors for structural health monitoring. From november 2020 to October 2020, he was a researcher at National Research Council (CNR-IEIIT), where he studied Machine Learning models applied to distributed fiber optic temperature sensors. In March 2023, he recevived the Ph.D. degree in Information Technology from Politecnico di Milano with a thesis entitled “Fiber Optic Current Sensors for System Monitoring”. During the Ph.D. period, he has also collaborated with the start-up company Cohaerentia. He was involved in various projects such as the monitoring of profile temperature and displacement of glaciers by means of fiber optic sensors based on Brillouin technology and the proactive surveillance of the railway integrity exploiting the already deployed telecom fiber infrastructure. His current research interests are mainly focused on the the analysis of innovative solutions to implement voltage and current fiber optic sensors to measure AC and DC electrical signals.
Matteo Di Giancamillo
PhD student
Matteo Di Giancamillo received the M.Sc cum laude in physics engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2021 with a thesis entitled “Electromagnetic design of a silicon-based integrated single photon source for quantum communications”. From July 2021 to July 2022 he was associated with the National Research Council – Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology – with the activity of simulation of guided propagation and resonant cavities in erbium-doped silicon using numerical calculation software (COMSOL and LUMERICAL) in the framework of the QUASIX project financed by the italian space agency. He is currently a PhD student at the Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, in the telecommunications area. His research interest includes the design and engineering of quantum key distribution system, and it is mainly focused to the use of spontaneous parametric down conversion sources as single photon sources, both in entangled and heralded mode. His research concerns both the development of fiber optic systems and the analysis of satellite communications. During the months of October and November 2022 he was a student visitor at the Federico II laboratories in Naples for the study and characterization of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors. From March to April 2023, he was a student visitor at the research and development center of Thales Alenia Space in Toulouse for the analysis for the study of the communication channel between satellite and ground station in the framework of QKD protocols.
Alessandro Gagliano
PhD Student
Alessandro Gagliano was born in December 1997 in Como, Italy. He received his B.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics in 2019 and his M.Sc. degree cum laude in Telecommunication Engineering in 2021, both from Politecnico di Milano. In his thesis, Alessandro deeply analysed the integration between quantum and classical signals in shared optical links, including theoretical and experimental evaluations with a focus on the spontaneous Raman scattering impact. From February 2022 to October 2022, he was a temporary research fellow at the Optical Communication Laboratory (PoliCom) of Politecnico di Milano within the FIRST project, where he investigated the performance of quantum communication systems in innovative photonic solutions based on space-division multiplexing. At ICOP2022, Alessandro won the Youngest Speaker Award for presenting the paper “Raman Efficiency estimation for integrated quantum-classical communication systems”. Since November 2022, he has been attending the Ph.D. program in Information Technology offered by the Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria of Politecnico di Milano. His doctoral research interests focus on quantum key distribution protocols and optical infrastructure for integrated quantum-classical networks.
Stefano Gaiani
PhD student
Stefano Gaiani was born in Monza (MB) in 1997. He graduated in Physics Engineering (2020) at Politecnico di Milano and obtained the Master Degree (summa cum laude) in Telecommunication Engineering (2022) at Politecnico di Milano with a thesis entitled “Dual Modulator based SSB Transmitter for Optical Metro and Access Networks”. Currently he is a PhD student in Information Technology at the Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria in Politecnico di Milano and his interest is focused on the field of optical communications. In particular, his research regards the improvement of the optical metro and access network performance (in terms of reach and capacity) by adopting innovative sustainable solutions. These ones range from the exploitation of innovative cheap, cost-effective and low power-consuming laser sources (VCSELs) to the use of algorithms in high-level receivers for the single sideband signals detection (like the Kramers-Kronig algorithm), tackling also techniques such as Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) and the transmission of multicarrier formats (for example, Discrete Multitone). Aspects related to the coexistence in the same optical network of classical communications, the arising quantum communications and sensing capabilities are also taken into account. Together with his activity, he also flanks Master Degree students during their thesis period in the department laboratory.
Mario Martinelli
Retired full professor
Mario Martinelli is Full Professor in Optical Communications at the Politecnico di Milano and retired in 2022. He received the Laurea Degree in Nuclear-Electronics Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano in 1976. He started his research activities in 1997 at CISE Laboratories in Segrate (Milano) where he joined the Quantum Electronics Division. In 1981 he was Visiting Researcher at the London University College (UK). In 1992, he was appointed Professor of Optical Communications by the Politecnico di Milano. In 1995 he was involved in the foundation of CoreCom, a Research Consortium between the Politecnico di Milano and Pirelli Cables and Sistems established to develop researches in Optical Processing and Photonic Switching. He was CoreCom Director from 1995 to 2008. He is Fellow of the Optical Society of America. He is author of more than 80 scientific papers on the most important Journals and of more than 100 communications presented at international Congresses. He holds 35 international patents.
