Fellow, IEEE
Prof. Gianfranco Chicco, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy

Gianfranco Chicco holds a Ph.D. in Electrotechnics Engineering and is a Full Professor of Electrical Energy Systems at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universities Politehnica of Bucharest and “Gheorghe Asachi” of Iasi (Romania) in 2017 and 2018, respectively. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the past Chair of the IEEE Italy Section. He is listed in the “Top 2% Scientists” ranking prepared by Stanford University. He is the Scientific Responsible of the research group on Power and Energy Systems at Politecnico di Torino, and the Responsible of the Torino unit of the Italian Consortium ENSIEL. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Sustainable Energy Grids and Networks. He is a past Subject Editor of Energy and a past Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, and IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy. He was the Conference Chair of WESC 2006, IEEE PES ISGT Europe 2017, UPEC 2020, IEEE Eurocon 2023, SEST 2024, and a co-Chair of IEEE SmartGridComm 2024. His research topics include Data Analytics Applied to Smart Grids, Power System Analysis, Distribution System Analysis, Electrical Load Management, Energy Efficiency, Multi-Energy System Operation, and Power Quality.

 

Prof. Raffaele Carli, Polytechnic of Bari, Italy

Raffaele Carli received his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering with honours in 2002 and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Information Engineering in 2016, both from Politecnico di Bari, Italy. From 2003 to 2004, he was a Reserve Officer with Italian Navy. From 2004 to 2012, he worked as System and Control Engineer and Technical Manager for a multinational company in the space and defense sector. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in Systems and Control Engineering at Politecnico di Bari, where he is the technical lead for the Decision and Control Laboratory (http://dclab.poliba.it/), coordinated by prof. Mariagrazia Dotoli, within the Department of Electric and Information Engineering . He has held national qualifications as a Full Professor since 2023. Since 2022 he has been Vice-Coordinator of the National PhD program in Autonomous Systems and since 2025 he has also served as Vice-Coordinator of the Interuniversity Ph.D Program in Smart and Sustainable Industry (Politecnico di Bari - Università degli Studi di Bari). He serves on the editorial board of IEEE journals as an  Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (awarded Best Associate Editor in 2023 and 2024) and IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. He is also an active member of the conference editorial boards of various events sponsored by IFAC and IEEE, including those sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), and IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS). His organizational roles include positions on the committees of several IEEE conferences (IEEE CASE 2017, 2020, 2024, & 2026, SMC 2023, SmartAgri&SuSY 2025, ICIEA 2026,). He also served as the General Co-chair of the 7th and 10th International Conference on Renewable Energy and Conservation (ICREC 2022 and 2025) and General Chair of the 2025 IFAC Workshop on Smart Energy Systems for Efficient and Sustainable Smart Grids and Smart Cities. He currently is General Co-chair of the IEEE International Congress on Smart Agriculture and Sustainable Systems Engineering (SmartAgri&SuSY 2026), June 7-10, Tirana, Albania, and of the 11th International Conference on Renewable Energy and Conservation (ICREC 2026), November 20-22, Rome, Italy. Since 2026, he is the Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee on Smart Cities and Sustainability (TC 10.3).  An IEEE Senior Member since 2022, he currently serves as the Mentorship Subcommittee Chair within the IEEE SMCS for the 2023-2026 term and the Secretary of the IEEE Italy Section Chapter CS23 of the CSS for the 2025-2026 term. He is an author of over 140 printed international publications (Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=OvXT8Y0AAAAJ&hl=en). His research focuses on developing decision and control techniques for modeling, optimizing, managing, and controlling complex, large-scale systems, particularly in smart frameworks such as industry, logistics, and energy.  He is the Principal Investigator of the fundamental research project “Control and Optimization of Networked Smart Energy Systems through User-driven and Sustainability-oriented Strategies (CONSENSUS)”, funded through the competitive procedure of the Italian Science Fund (FIS 3 Call 2024), with a total budget of €1.5 million. He received the 2024 IEEE Italy Section SMCS Chapter Award for Excellence of Early Career Researchers. For additional information, visit: http://dclab.poliba.it/people/raffaele-carli/

Speech Title: Empowering the Energy Transition through Optimization and Control of Networked Smart Energy Systems

Abstract: The ongoing energy transition is fostering the evolution of traditional power systems into decentralized, interconnected, and user-centric Networked Smart Energy Systems (NSESs), such as energy communities and smart districts. These systems enable sustainable and flexible energy management through the cooperation of heterogeneous actors, including end-users, service providers, market players, and policy-makers. However, the operation of NSESs is challenged by the need to coordinate distributed energy resources, storage systems, flexible loads, and user behaviors under multiple and often conflicting objectives related to efficiency, sustainability, reliability, and user engagement. Addressing these challenges requires advanced optimization and control strategies capable of enabling intelligent and scalable decision-making processes. This keynote presents innovative optimization and control frameworks for NSESs, with particular focus on energy communities equipped with energy trading, sharing, and flexibility services. The proposed approaches integrate optimization and game-theoretic methodologies to design user-driven and sustainability-oriented control architectures that improve coordination among actors, enhance energy flexibility, maximize self-consumption, and support renewable energy integration. The effectiveness of the presented methodologies is demonstrated through numerical simulations and realistic case studies, highlighting their potential to empower the energy transition toward more sustainable, resilient, and intelligent power systems.