Curriculum Vitae Dr Daniele Magazzeni - Department of Informatics ...

Current Position
Position: Research Associate
Department of Informatics
King’s College London
Curriculum Vitae
Dr Daniele Magazzeni
Office Address: Department of Informatics,
King’s College London.
Strand Building, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Email: daniele.magazzeni@kcl.ac.uk
Skype Contact: dmagazzeni
Web: http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/danmag
Employment History
11/2011 - present Research Associate at the Department of Informatics.
King’s College London,UK.
9/2011 - 10/2011 Research Fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science.
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.
08/2009 - 08/2011 Research Fellow at the Department of Sciences.
University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy.
Education
03/2009 PhD Degree in Computer Science.
Department of Computer Science. University of L’Aquila, Italy.
Thesis title: Explicit Model Checking Techniques applied to Control and Planning
Problems
10/2005 Degree in Computer Science with the maximum score “cum laude”
Faculty of Sciences. University of L’Aquila, Italy.
Scholarships
11/2005-11/2008 Ph.D. scholarship funded by the Italian Government.
Research Interests
– Artificial Intelligence: domain-independent planning, temporal-continuous planning,
planning in mixed discrete-continuous domains, planning under uncertainty, policy learning,
hybrid control, reinforcement learning, heuristic search, geometric reasoning, path
planning, soft computing, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms
– Formal Methods: model checking, hardware/software verification, control systems, decision diagrams,
graph algorithms
– Intelligent Information Acquisition: information extraction, spatial relations, visual reasoning, spatial/temporal
reasoning

Awards
– Best Paper Award for the paper “Automatic Construction of Efficient Multiple Battery Usage Policies”
at ICAPS 2011 in Freiburg, Germany (with Maria Fox and Derek Long).
– 2011 Italian young researchers award: given by Gruppo Nazionale per il Calcolo Scientifico (GNCS).
Patents
– UK Patent pending: Automated construction of usage policies
Research Projects
– EU FP7 Project 288273: PANDORA - Persistently Autonomous Robots (as a RA)
– EPSRC Project (EP/G0233650): Automated Modelling and Reformulation in Planning (as a RA)
– Research collaboration with Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Professional Activities
Editing of Scientific Journals
– Associate Editor of European Journal on Artificial Intelligence (AICom)
– PhD Thesis Summaries Editor of AI Communications
Programme Committee Membership
– PC member of 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013)
– PC member of 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2013)
– PC member of 22nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2012)
– Doctoral Consortium Mentor at ICAPS 2011
– Organising Committee member of CILC 2011
– Member of the Young Researchers Committee of the World Federation on Soft Computing
Reviewing for Scientific Journals and Conferences
– Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)
– AI Communications
– Applied Soft Computing
– Journal of Visual Languages and Computing
– AAAI (Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
– ICAPS (International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling)
– IJCAI (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
– ECAI (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
– PlanSIG (UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group)
Invited Talks
– Middlesex University, London, UK, March 2012.
Title: Policy learning for hybrid systems under uncertainty
– University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy, May 2008.
Title: Verification and synthesis of hybrid control systems
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International Schools and Conferences
– Speaker at the 21st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2011),
11-16/06/2011, Freiburg, Germany.
– Speaker at Dagstuhl Seminar on Runtime Verification, Diagnosis, Planning and Control for Autonomous
Systems, 7-12/11/2010, Wadern, Germany.
– Speaker at the 20th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2010),
12-16/05/2010, Toronto, Canada.
– Speaker at the 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2009),
19-23/09/2009, Thessaloniki, Greece.
– Speaker at the International Workshop on Visual Languages and Computing VLC09 in (DMS 2009),
10-12/09/2009, San Francisco Bay, USA.
– Speaker at the International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control and
Automation (CIMCA 2008), 10-12/12/2008, Vienna, Austria.
– International Summer School on Verification Technology, Systems and Applications (VTSA 2008),
15-19/09/2008, Saarbrücken, Germany.
– Speaker at the 5th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
(ICINCO 2008), 11-15/05/2008, Funchal, Portugal.
– Speaker at the International Joint Conferences on Computer, Information, and Systems Sciences, and
Engineering (CISSE 2007), 3-12/12/2007.
– Speaker at the 3rd International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (ICAS 2007),
19-25/06/2007, Athens, Greece.
– Speaker at the 3rd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
(ICINCO 2006), 1-5/08/2006, Setubal, Portugal.
– International Summer School on Modelling and Verifying Parallel Processes (MOVEP 2006), 19-
23/06/2006, Bordeaux, France.
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Teaching and Supervision
Teaching as lecturer
I designed and taught the following courses:
2010/2011: MSc module on Formal Methods for Verification of Complex Systems
(30 lectures - 60 hours) (Course taught in English)
Department of Computer Science, University of L’Aquila, Italy.
2010/2011: Bachelor module on Software Engineering
(25 lectures - 50 hours) (Course taught in Italian)
Department of Sciences, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy.
2009/2010: MSc module on Formal Methods for Verification of Complex Systems
(30 lectures - 60 hours) (Course taught in English)
Department of Computer Science, University of L’Aquila, Italy.
2008/2009: Bachelor module on Software Engineering
(25 lectures - 50 hours) (Course taught in Italian)
Department of Sciences, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy.
2008/2009: MSc module on Formal Methods for Verification of Complex Systems
(30 lectures - 60 hours) (Course taught in Italian)
Department of Computer Science, University of L’Aquila, Italy.
Each course was assessed by projects, written examinations and oral examinations.
Teaching as teaching assistant
I collaborated in teaching the following courses:
2007/2008: MSc module on Methods for complex systems verification
(4 lectures - 8 hours) (Course taught in Italian)
Class taught by Prof. Benedetto Intrigila.
University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy.
2006/2007: Bachelor module on Programming Languages
(15 lectures - 30 hours) (Course taught in Italian)
Class taught by Prof. Paola Inverardi.
Department of Computer Science, University of L’Aquila, Italy.
2006/2007: Bachelor module on Database Management Systems
(15 lectures - 30 hours) (Course taught in Italian)
Class taught by Prof. Stefania Costantini.
Department of Computer Science, University of L’Aquila, Italy.
Supervised PhD students
2008/2011: Fabio Mercorio
Model Checking for the Analysis and Control of Complex and Nondeterministic Systems
PhD Student in Computer Science - University of L’Aquila, Italy.
(Jointly supervised with Dr. Giuseppe Della Penna).
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Supervised MSc students
2012-: Priyanka Agarwal
Satellite Observation Planning
King’s College London.
(Jointly supervised with Prof. Maria Fox).
Supervised MSc theses
– Gianfranco Murador
Visual Information Extraction from Biomedical Data
(Jointly supervised with Prof. Sergio Orefice).
University of L’Aquila (March 2011).
– Fabio Mercorio
A PDDL+ Planner based on Model-Checking Techniques
(Jointly supervised with Dr. Giuseppe Della Penna).
University of L’Aquila (October 2008).
– Emilio Santavicca
OBDD Encoding of Lookup Tables
(Jointly supervised with Dr. Giuseppe Della Penna).
University of L’Aquila (July 2008).
– Nadia Lauri
Automatic Encoding of Control Systems using Binary Decision Diagrams
(Jointly supervised with Dr. Giuseppe Della Penna).
University of L’Aquila (April 2007).
– Luigi Grassano
A Model-Checking Based Solution to the Idle Speed Control Problem
(Jointly supervised with Dr. Giuseppe Della Penna).
University of L’Aquila (January 2007).
Supervised Bachelor’s theses
– Antonio Morleo
Design Pattern in Java
University of Chieti-Pescara (March 2011).
– Francesco Scoccia
Planning through Genetic Algorithms
(Jointly supervised with Dr. Giuseppe Della Penna).
University of L’Aquila (December 2010).
– Nadine Soccio
Geographic Information Systems
University of Chieti-Pescara (October 2009).
– Marco Pantalone
The PDDL Language and its Evolution
University of Chieti-Pescara (October 2009).
– Giovanni Lattanzio
Web Information Extraction
University of Chieti-Pescara (October 2009).
– Anna Angelucci
Planning Problem Modelling
University of Chieti-Pescara (June 2009).
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Research Interests
My main research interests are in Artificial Intelligence Planning and Intelligent Systems. I am also interested
in the related areas of Formal Methods and Intelligent Information Acquisition. My contributions
to these fields, and a description of my current research and plans for the next few years are reported in
the following.
AI Planning and Intelligent Systems
My research focuses on temporal and metric planning and on planning with continuous change.
These features make AI planning a very interesting and promising research area for dealing with realworld
applications. In this direction, important steps are represented by the temporal and continuous
extensions to the Planning Domain Description Language, which resulted in the languages PDDL2.1 and
PDDL+, developed by Maria Fox and Derek Long.
In my PhD Thesis ([1]) I developed the UPMurphi tool (see also [7] and [23]), the first planner
able to deal with PDDL+ domains. UPMurphi is based on a discretise and validate approach, in
which the continuous dynamics of the problem are relaxed into a discretised model. Then the discretised
search space is explored using the planning-as-model-checking paradigm. Once a plan has been found
it is then validated against the original continuous model, using the plan validator VAL. If it is invalid,
the discretisation is refined and the search resumes. UPMurphi has been applied for the control of real
continuous systems (see, e.g. [21], [10]).
Since then I have been working on extending the work done with UPMurphi. The extension is twofold:
on one hand I co-developed the V-UPMurphi tool, which enforces UPMurphi through the use of the disk
during the plan synthesis. On the other hand I co-developed and formally analysed an algorithm (described
in [19]) to solve cost-optimal strong planning problems in non-deterministic domains. In particular,
this represents an important advance over the well-known work of Cimatti and his team (MBP planner),
which is to find optimal strong solutions with respect to a metric function.
Recently I have worked with Maria Fox and Derek Long on plan-based policy learning. The idea is
to tackle the uncertainty involved in most real systems by sampling from a set of determinised instances
of the problem, solving each instance using a planner, and then learning a policy based on classification
of plans found for the samples. This new approach was first described in the work [18] that received
the ICAPS-2011 Best Paper Award. The approach is being applied for control of real systems, including
battery load management (described in [2]) and AUV mission control (described in [16]). The
policy-learning approach plays also an important role in the EU Project PANDORA (where the policy
is embedded into the ROS framework) and within a collaboration with researchers at the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute - MBARI (where the policy is integrated in the TREX architecture).
I am now working, with Prof. Maria Fox and Prof. Derek Long, on the use of planning for the
control of hybrid systems. To this aim, a first on-going research is the extension of the planner
colin to deal with more complex domains. In particular, we aim to make the planner able to reason
with trigonometric functions, and to handle exogenous events and processes. This will make possible to
address very interesting domains, presenting complex dynamics and challenging concurrency issues.
Given my background in Model Checking, I am also investigating the use of continuous planning for
hybrid systems verification. In fact, the semantics of PDDL+ is based on Henzinger’s theory of hybrid
automata. Moreover, planning can be used to find trajectories from the initial state of a system to states
that violate a safety property. Thus, exploring the use of the model-checking-as-planning paradigm in the
hybrid systems domain appears promising.
Formal Methods
In the broad area of Formal Methods, my research mainly focuses on the verification and synthesis of
control systems. Given the model of a system, the objective is to automatically synthesise a controller
for it. To this aim, much work has been done based on symbolic model checking. As a first contribution
on this area, I co-developed an approach based on explicit model checking, which is described in
the works [4] and [15]. The methodology has then been extended to deal with robust control making
use of a probabilistic analysis of the robustness of the generated controller, as described in [22]. I have
also conducted a theoretical and experimental comparison between controller synthesis based on modelchecking
and dynamic programming, as reported in [30]. Along with the synthesis of controllers, I have
also worked on their optimisation, proposing a compression scheme based on OBDDs which provides a
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compact representation of a controller without failing to meet the fast response requirements (this work
is described in [14]). Moreover, working on the frontier between Model Checking and AI, I have proposed
a hybrid controller (described in [8]), consisting of a numerical component (generated through model
checking), and a robust component, based on fuzzy rules. On the verification side, I have worked on
using model-checking techniques for the verification of hybrid system controllers (as described in [11])
and fuzzy ones (as described in [34]).
Intelligent Information Acquisition
I have been working on visual languages based on spatial relations. In this context, I have codeveloped
the novel paradigm of visual information extraction (VIE), where the extraction is driven
by the spatial arrangements between the elements present in the source domain. This idea has been
implemented in the SRQL framework, which was originally designed to perform IE from web pages
based on the concept of object bounding box (as described in the work [9]). Then we have extended the
framework to make it able to deal with a wider set of domains, including PDF documents (as described
in [6]) and Geospatial Data (as described in [20]), for which the formal theory has been extended to take
into account object contours. I am now investigating the applicability of the VIE approach to domains
involving temporal reasoning.
Research software
– UPMurphi: The Universal Planner Murphi tool represents a computational engine to support universal
planning for possibly nonlinear Discrete Time Hybrid Systems defined with a PDDL+ model.
It is based on the discretise and validate approach. For more details see the paper [23].
– HCGMurphi: The Hybrid Controller Generator Murphi is built on top of CGMurphi and integrates
fuzzy and numerical control. It automatically generates a hybrid controller consisting of a numerical
component and a fuzzy component. The former is the optimal control table synthesized through
CGMurphi. The latter is a fuzzy controller generated and/or calibrated using the information in the
numerical controller. The resulting hybrid controller takes advantage of the optimality of numerical
controllers and the robustness of fuzzy ones. For more details see the paper [8].
– CGMurphi: The Controller Generator Murphi is a tool for the automatic synthesis of optimal and
robust numerical controllers. The tool takes as input the model of the system and the goal description
and outputs an optimal control table. After that, CGMurphi uses a probabilistic approach in order
to extend the optimal controller and to make it robust. Finally, since the control table for complex
systems may contain millions of entries, CGMurphi implements a specifically designed OBDD-based
compression technique and outputs a compressed numerical controller translated in a C code fragment
or in a VHDL sequential circuit definition. For more details see the paper [4].
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Publications
Theses
[1]. D. Magazzeni.
Explicit Model Checking Techniques applied to Control and Planning Problems.
PhD Thesis.
Department of Computer Science - University of L’Aquila.
Journal Articles
[2]. M. Fox, D. Long, D. Magazzeni.
Plan-based Policies for Efficient Multiple Battery Load Management.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 44: 335-382, 2012.
[3]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, S. Orefice.
A General Theory of Spatial Relations to Support a Graphical Tool for Visual Information Extraction.
Journal of Visual Languages & Computing (JVLC). (to appear)
[4]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, I. Melatti, E. Tronci.
CGMurphi: Automatic Synthesis of Numerical Controllers for Nonlinear Hybrid Systems.
European Journal of Control (EJC). (to appear)
[5]. G. Cardinale Ciccotti, G. Della Penna, R. Del Sordo, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, S. Orefice.
SyBeL: A System Modelling Language Enhancing Automatic Support in the Software Development
Process.
International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (IJSEKE). (to appear)
[6]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, S. Orefice.
A Spatial Relation-based Framework to Perform Visual Information Extraction.
Knowledge and Information Systems 30(3): 667-692, 2012.
[7]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio.
A Universal Planning System for Hybrid Domains
Applied Intelligence 36(4): 932-959, 2012.
[8]. D. Magazzeni.
A Framework for the Automatic Synthesis of Hybrid Fuzzy/Numerical Controllers.
Applied Soft Computing 11(1): 276-284, 2011.
[9]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, S. Orefice.
Visual Extraction of Information from Web Pages.
Journal of Visual Languages & Computing 21(1): 23-32, 2010.
[10]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio.
Resource-Optimal Planning For An Autonomous Planetary Vehicle.
International Journal of Artificial Intelligence & Applications 1(3):15-29, 2010.
[11]. E. Ciancamerla, G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, I. Melatti, M. Minichino, A. Tofani,
E. Tronci, M. Venturini Zilli.
Automatic Verification of Hybrid System Controllers with the CMurphi Verifier.
Journal of Discrete Event Control Systems 1(1): 69-82, 2010.
Journal Articles (under review)
[12]. M. Fox, D. Long, D. Magazzeni.
Learning, Evaluating and Verifying Policies for Algal Bloom Tracking.
International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT).
[13]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio, E. Tronci.
Synthesis of Cost-Optimal Strong Plans in Non-Deterministic Domains.
Applied Intelligence.
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Book Chapters
[14]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, N. Lauri, D. Magazzeni.
Fast and Compact Encoding of Numerical Controllers using OBDDs.
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics: Selected Papers from ICINCO 2008: pp. 75-87,
2009.
[15]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, I. Melatti, A. Tofani, E. Tronci.
Automated Generation Of Optimal Controllers Through Model Checking Techniques.
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics: Selected Papers from ICINCO 2006: pp. 107-119,
2008.
Refereed Conference Papers
[16]. M. Fox, D. Long, D. Magazzeni.
Plan-based Policy Learning for Autonomous Feature Tracking.
Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS
2012).
[17]. M. Fox, D. Long, D. Magazzeni.
Automatic Construction of Efficient Multiple Battery Usage Policies.
Proceedings of the 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011), pp.
2620-2625, 2011.
(Invited Paper in the Best Paper Track).
[18]. M. Fox, D. Long, D. Magazzeni.
Automatic Construction of Efficient Multiple Battery Usage Policies.
Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS
2011), pp. 74-81, 2011.
(ICAPS-2011 Best Paper Award).
[19]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio, E. Tronci.
Cost-Optimal Strong Planning in Non-Deterministic Domains.
Proceedings of 8th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
(ICINCO 2011), pp. 56-66, 2011.
[20]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, S. Orefice.
Supporting Visual Information Extraction from Geospatial Data.
Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS 2011).
[21]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio.
A PDDL+ Benchmark Problem: The Batch Chemical Plant.
Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS
2010), pp. 222-225, 2010.
[22]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio.
Planning for Autonomous Planetary Vehicles.
Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (ICAS 2010),
pp. 131-136, 2010.
[23]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, F. Mercorio.
UPMurphi: a Tool for Universal Planning on PDDL+ Problems.
Proceedings of 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2009),
pp. 106-113, 2009.
[24]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, S. Orefice.
A Graphical Tool to Support Visual Information Extraction.
Proceedings of 15th International Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS 2009), pp.
329-334, 2009.
[25]. D. Magazzeni.
Automatic Generation of Hybrid Fuzzy/Numerical Controllers.
Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling, Control and
Automation (CIMCA 2008), pp. 946-951, 2008.
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[26]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni.
Evaluating Fuzzy Controller Robustness using Model Checking.
Proceedings of 8th International Workshop on Fuzzy Logic and Applications (WILF 2009), vol. 5571
of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 303-311, 2009.
[27]. M. Talamo, F. Arcieri, G. Della Penna, A. Dimitri, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni.
Robustness and Interoperability Problems in Security Devices.
Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (Inscrypt 2008).
[28]. M. Talamo, F. Arcieri, G. Della Penna, A. Dimitri, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni.
Verifying Extended Criteria for the Interoperability of Security Devices.
Proceedings of 3rd International Symposium on Information Security (IS 2008), vol. 5332 of Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, pp. 1131-1139, 2008.
[29]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, N. Lauri, D. Magazzeni.
OBDD Compression of Numerical Controllers.
Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
(ICINCO 2008), pp. 43-50, 2008.
[30]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni.
Synthesis of Optimal Control Systems: a Comparison between Model Checking and Dynamic Programming
Techniques.
Novel Algorithms and Techniques in Telecommunications, Automation and Industrial Electronics,
proceedings of IETA 2007, pp. 54-59, 2007.
[31]. G. Della Penna, F. Fallucchi, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni.
A Genetic Approach to the Automatic Generation of Fuzzy Control Systems from Numerical Controllers.
Proceedings of 10th Congress of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2007), vol
4733 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 230-241, 2007.
[32]. G. Della Penna, D. Magazzeni, A. Tofani, B. Intrigila, I. Melatti, E. Tronci.
Automatic Synthesis of Robust Numerical Controllers.
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (ICAS
2007), pp. 4-11, 2007.
[33]. G. Della Penna, B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, I. Melatti, A. Tofani, E. Tronci.
Automatic Generation Of Optimal Controllers Through Model Checking Techniques.
Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
(ICINCO 2006), pp. 26-33, 2006.
[34]. B. Intrigila, D. Magazzeni, I. Melatti, A. Tofani, E. Tronci.
A Model Checking Technique for the Verification of Fuzzy Control Systems.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control and
Automation (CIMCA 2005), pp. 536-542, 2005.
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