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General Information
| Full name | Alessandro Zocca |
| Current position | Tenured assistant professor (UD1) |
Experience
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2019-present Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam - chair of the departmental outreach committee
- member of the departmental internship committee
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2017-2019 Postdoctoral researcher
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, US - advised by Adam Wierman and Steven Low
- affiliated fellow of the Resnick Sustainability Institute
- supported by personal NWO Rubicon grant
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2017-2019 Postdoctoral researcher
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam - advised by Bert Zwart
- supported by NWO VICI grant ''Rare events: Asymptotics, Algorithms, Applications''
Education
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2015 PhD in Mathematics
Eindhoven University of Technology, NL - Thesis Spatio-temporal dynamics of random access networks an interacting particle system approach
- Supervised by Sem Borst, Johan van Leeuwaarden, and Francesca Nardi
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2011 MASt. in Mathematics (Part III)
University of Cambridge, UK -
2010 B.Sc. in Mathematics
Università degli Studi di Padova, IT
Honors, awards, and grants
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2015 - Applied Probability Trust award for the best PhD thesis in applied probability
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2017 - NWO Rubicon grant (€135.000, 2 years of postdoc funding, ref. 680.50.1529) for the project: Renewables and uncertainty in future power systems: Mathematical challenges and solutions
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2024 - NWO VIDI grant (€850.000, 5 years of funding) for the project: Power Network Optimization in the Age of Climate Extremes
Academic interests
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applied probability
- rare events on networks
- rare-event sampling methods
- random graph models
- interacting particle systmes
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network optimization and control
- multi-agent reinforcement learning
- optimal network design
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main applications
- power grids reliability
- power grids resilience against climate extremes
- electricity markets
- robust ship design
Other interests
- Hobbies: Swimming, cycling, running - living the triathlon dream!