Rate My Professor Massimiliano Vasile

Professor Massimiliano Vasile is the Professor of Space Systems Engineering and Director of the Aerospace Centre of Excellence in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He also holds the position of Director of Research for the department. Vasile's research specializations encompass computational intelligence applied to aerospace engineering, global optimisation techniques for the design and optimisation of space trajectories, uncertainty quantification techniques integrated with optimisation for complex engineering systems, Evidence Based Robust Optimisation, non-deterministic planning and goal allocation for robots, fault-tolerant distributed navigation systems for spacecraft, nonlinear uncertainty quantification in space flight mechanics with applications to space debris and asteroid manipulation, multi-objective optimal control, and multi-objective optimisation under uncertainty. He leads the Stardust network on asteroids and space debris, the UTOPIAE network on uncertainty treatment and optimisation in aerospace engineering, and is part of the management team for the EPSRC ENCORE network on resilience in complex engineering systems. As principal investigator, he directs the ESA-funded SOLERO project examining solar power satellites against the space environment, and serves as co-investigator on an AI-based multi-sensor data fusion project for autonomous navigation around asteroids.

Vasile has received prestigious awards including Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2024, AIAA Associate Fellow in 2022, Senior IEEE Member in 2022, Best Paper Award in Innovation in Smart Cities and Systems in 2022, Best Interactive Paper Award at the International Astronautical Congress in 2021, AAS/AIAA SFM Best Paper Award in 2020, and Innovative Computational Methods in Dynamical Astronomy in 2023. Key publications include 'New solutions for the symmetrical n-body problem through variational approach and optimisation techniques' (2026, Journal of Aerospace Science, Technologies & Systems), 'An Inflationary Differential Evolution Algorithm for Space Trajectory Optimization' (2011), 'Robust space trajectory design using belief optimal control' (2018), and 'Multi-objective robust trajectory optimization of multi-asteroid missions' (2021). With 476 research outputs comprising 131 journal articles, 179 conference papers, and other contributions, he actively serves on programme committees for the International Workshops on AI for Space Sustainability.