Dr Mauro S. Innocente is a Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering and a member of the Research Institute for Future Transport and Cities (FTC) at Coventry University. He is also the founder and leader of the Autonomous Vehicles & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AVAILab).

He received his building & structural engineering degree from the National University of the Northeast (Argentina) in 2003, his MSc degree in numerical methods for calculus and design in engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain) in 2007, his PhD degree in Particle Swarm Optimisation from Swansea University (UK) in 2011, and his Postgraduate Degree in Academic Practice in Higher Education from Coventry University (UK) in 2017.

He worked as an Engineering Assistant for a civil engineering company in Argentina from 2001 to 2003; as a Research Assistant in the Analysis & Advanced Materials for Structural Design group (AMADE) at the University of Gerona (Spain) in 2006; as a Research Assistant in the Civil & Computational Engineering Centre (C²EC) at Swansea University in 2010; as a Research Officer in the Advanced Sustainable Manufacturing Technologies (ASTUTE) project also at Swansea University from 2010 to 2014; as a Research Associate in the Institute of Energy at Cardiff University (UK) from 2014 to 2015; and joined Coventry University (UK) in 2015 as a Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering and a member of the Research Institute for Future Transport and Cities. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer and founded the AVAILab in 2018.

He currently teaches modules in Mathematical Modelling and Autonomous Aerospace Vehicle Systems in the MSc Aerospace Engineering course. He has also delivered lectures on Artificial Intelligence, Optimisation and Aerospace Structures within a range of MSc courses.

He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the 5th LRF-ICON PhD Studentship Award for project entitled:

“Efficiency Enhancement of Class-A Foams by Means of Metal Oxide Nanoparticles for Self-Organising Swarms of Autonomous UAVs to Fight Wildfires”
Funder: LRF International Consortium of Nanotechnologies (grant ICON-2018-45)
fEC: £100,000 (£50,000 award + £50,000 match funding).
Date of award: Jan 2019.
PI: Dr Mauro S. Innocente (Lead Researcher & Main Supervisor).
Co-I: Dr Evangelos Gkanas (Researcher & Co-supervisor).
Co-I: Prof. Guillermo Rein (External Co-Supervisor at Imperial College).
Link 1, Link 2

As Co-I, he was awarded the Early-Career Researchers Grant for project entitled:
“Optimisable system-level thermal models for power electronic converters”
Funder: EPSRC Centre for Power Electronics (through grant EP/K035304/1).
fEC: £55,000 (fEC for Coventry University: £50,000).
Date of award: Jun 2015.
PI: Dr Daniel J. Rogers (University of Oxford).
Co-I: Dr Mauro S. Innocente.
Link 1, Link 2

His research is concerned with algorithm developments in Particle Swarm Optimisation, and with the development of soft and natural computing, mathematical modelling, control, and optimisation tools within a comprehensive spectrum of applications such as fire propagation modelling, thermal modelling, optimal design of power converters, structural analysis and design, swarm robotics applied to firefighting, and autonomous AI-enabled UAVs for predictive maintenance. Examples are:

• Adaptive general-purpose Particle Swarm Algorithm.
• Adaptive Surrogate Modelling & Optimisation (ASMO) of problems described by real or synthetic data.
• Simulation-based design tool for power-dense converters using efficient physics-based models.
• Mathematical modelling of wildfire propagation.
• Self-organising swarms of autonomous firefighting drones.
• Efficiency enhancement of class-A foams by means of nanoparticles to improve performance of firefighting drones.
• Autonomous AI-enabled UAVs for predictive maintenance.

Available Opportunities

• Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Enabled Drones to Inform Predictive Maintenance Actions in the Railways and Roads
  Main Supervisor: Dr Mauro S. Innocente
  Funding: fully funded (UK/EU/Overseas fees + £15,000 annual stipend)

Ongoing Projects

• Dynamics, Control and Cooperative Decision-Making in Swarms of Self-Organising Drones Aimed at Fighting Fires Autonomously
  Main Supervisor: Dr Mauro S. Innocente
  PhD Student: Paolo Grasso
  
  
• A Model-Based Design Platform to Conjointly Optimise the Performance of the Powertrains and the Associated Energy Management Strategy of the HEVs
  Main Supervisors: Dr Mauro S. Innocente & Dr Arash M. Dizqah (University of Sussex)
  PhD Student: Daizy Rajput
  
  
• Efficiency Enhancement of Class-A Foams by Means of Metal Oxide Nanoparticles for Self-Organising Swarms of Autonomous UAVs to Fight Wildfires
  Main Supervisor: Dr Mauro S. Innocente
  Co-Supervisors: Dr Evangelos Gkanas & Prof Guillermo Rein (Imperial College)
  PhD Student: Ioannis Papagiannis
  Funding: fully funded (UK/EU fees + £16,000 annual stipend)
  
  
• Developing a mathematical programming tool to design and optimise solar thermal power stations
  Main Supervisor: Dr Jonathan Nixon
  Co-Supervisor: Dr Mauro S. Innocente
  PhD Student: Malambage P. G. Sirimanna