DOMITILLA DEL VECCHIO
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering, LIDS
MIT
ddv@mit.edu
EDUCATION
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems
University of Rome at Tor Vergata
Laurea in Electronic Engineering magna cum laude
PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering and LIDS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering and LIDS
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Center for Computational Medicine and Biology (CCMB)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Visiting Research Scientist
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Graduate Research Assistant
Department of Control and Dynamical Systems
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, France
Visiting Graduate Researcher
Department of Control and Systems
University of Rome at Tor Vergata, Italy
Research Assistant
Department of Electronic Engineering
HONORS AND AWARDS
W. M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering, MIT
(2010-2013)
Donald P. Eckman Award, American Automatic Control Council (2010)
NSF CAREER Award (2007-2012) Crosby Award, University of Michigan (2007)
Rackham Faculty Research Grant, University of Michigan (2006-2007)
Best Student Paper Award, American Control Conference (2004)
EAS Fellowship, Caltech (2000-2001)
Banca d’Italia Fellowship, Italy (2000-2001)
Engineering Fellowship, University of Rome Tor Vergata (1994-1999)
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Prof. Del Vecchio research program focuses on the development of
fundamental theory, algorithms and experimental demonstrations in two
different types of control systems: (a) networks of (semi- autonomous)
hybrid and embedded systems and (b) bio-molecular networks in living cells.
Main application areas for (a) include intelligent transportation systems and
driver-assist systems to ensure safety. Main application areas for (b) include
the rational and robust design of semi-synthetic biomolecular circuits in
living cells that accomplish a variety of functions.
JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS
J1.
P. Jiang, A. C. Ventura, E. D. Sontag, S. D. Merajver, A. J. Ninfa, and D.
Del Vecchio. Response to Comment on “Load-induced Modulation of
Signal Transduction Networks”. Science Signaling,
vol 5(205),
pages Ic2, 2012.
J2.
M. Hafner and D. Del Vecchio. Computational Tools for the Safety
Control of a Class of Piecewise Continuous Systems with Imperfect
Information on a Partial Order. SIAM J. on Control and Optimization, to
Appear, 2012
J3.
P. Jiang, A. C. Ventura, S. D. Merajver, E. D. Sontag, A. J. Ninfa, and D.
Del Vecchio. Load- induced Modulation of Signal Transduction
Networks. Science Signaling, vol 4(194), pages ra67, 2011 (This article
has also an Editor Highlight in Science).
J4.
J5.
J6.
J7.
J8.
J9.
J10.
J11.
J12.
J13.
J14.
J15.
J16.
J17.
R. Verma and D. Del Vecchio. Safety Control of Hidden Mode Hybrid
Systems. IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol 57(1), pages 62-77, 2011.
R. Verma and D. Del Vecchio. Safety in Semi-autonomous Multivehicle Systems: A Hybrid Control Approach. IEEE Robotics and
Automation Magazine, vol 18(3), pages 44-54, 2011. (Invited)
H. Ossareh, A. C. Ventura, S. D. Merajver, and D. Del Vecchio. Long
Signaling Cascades Tend to Attenuate Retroactivity. Biophysical
Journal, vol 100(7), pages 1617-1626, 2011
Ventura, P. Jiang, L. Van Wassenhove, D. Del Vecchio, S. D. Merajver,
and A. J. Ninfa. Signaling properties of a covalent modification cycle
are altered by a downstream target. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, vol 107
(22), pages 10032-10037, 2010
S. Jayanthi and D. Del Vecchio. Retroactivity Attenuation in Biomolecular Systems Based on Timescale Separation. IEEE Trans. on
Automatic Control, Conditionally Accepted, 2010.
R. Ghaemi, J. Sun, P. Iglesias, and D. Del Vecchio. A Method for
Determining the Robustness of Bio-molecular Oscillator Models. BMC
Systems Biology 3:95, 2009.
P. Varadarajan and D. Del Vecchio. Design and Characterization of a
Three-terminal Transcriptional Device through Polimerase Per
Second. IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience, 8(3):281-9, 2009.
Del Vecchio and E. D. Sontag. Engineering Principles in Bio-molecular
Systems: From Retroactivity to Insulation. European Journal of
Control-Fundamental Issues in Control-Special Issue for ECC 2009, vol.
15(3-4), pages 389-397, 2009. (Invited)
D. Del Vecchio. Observer-based Control of Block Triangular Discrete
Time Hybrid Automata on a Partial Order. International Journal of
Robust and Nonlinear Control—Special Issue on Observability and
Observer-based Control for Hybrid Systems, vol. 19(14), pages 15811602, 2009. (Invited)
D. Del Vecchio, A. J. Ninfa, and E. D. Sontag. Modular Cell Biology:
Retroactivity and Insulation. Nature/EMBO Molecular Systems
Biology, 4:161, 2008. (This article has also a News and Views in the
same journal)
D. Del Vecchio. Cascade estimators for systems on a partial order.
Systems & Control Letters, vol. 57(10), pages 842-850, 2008.
R. Verma, D. Del Vecchio, and H. Fathy. Development of a Scaled
Vehicle with Longitudinal Dynamics of a HMMWV for an ITS Testbed.
IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 13(1), pages 46-57,
2008.
D. Del Vecchio, R. M. Murray, and E. Klavins. Discrete State
Estimators for Systems on a Lattice. Automatica, vol. 42(2), pages 271285, 2006.
D. Del Vecchio and N. Petit. Boundary Control for an Industrial
Under-actuated Tubular Chemical Reactor. Journal of Process Control,
vol. 15, pages 771-784, 2005.
J18.
J19.
J20.
D. Del Vecchio, R. M. Murray, and P. Perona. Decomposition of Human
Motion into Dynamics Based Primitives with Application to Drawing
Tasks. Automatica, vol. 39(12), pages 2085-2098, 2003.
D. Del Vecchio, R. Marino, and P. Tomei. Adaptive Learning Control
for Feedback Linearizable Systems. European Journal of Control, vol.
9(5), pages 483-498, 2003.
D. Del Vecchio, R. Marino, and P. Tomei. Adaptive Control of
Feedback Linearizable Systems by Orthogonal Approximation
Functions. International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal
Processing, vol. 16, pages 635-652, 2002.
PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS
C1.
C2.
C3.
C4.
C5.
C6.
C7.
C8.
C9.
C10.
Colombo and D. Del Vecchio. Efficient Algorithms for Collision
Avoidance at Intersections. ACM Proc. of Hybrid Systems: Computation
and Control, 2012 (To Appear)
D. Del Vecchio and J-J. Slotine. A Contraction Theory Approach to
Singularly Perturbed Systems with Application to Retroactivity
Attenuation. Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, 2011
H. R. Ossareh and D. Del Vecchio. Retroactivity Attenuation in
Signaling Cascades. Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control,
2011(Invited)
R. Verma and D. Del Vecchio. Development and experimental
validation of a semi-autonomous cooperative active safety system.
Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, 2011 (Invited)
A. Colombo and D. Del Vecchio. Supervisory control of differentially
flat systems based on abstraction. Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Decision and
Control, 2011
R. Ghaemi and D. Del Vecchio. Safety control of piece-wise continuous
order preserving systems. Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control,
2011 (Invited)
S. Jayanthi, A Rosenberg, and D. Del Vecchio. Tuning an ActivatorRepressor Clock through Retroactivity. American Control Conference,
June 2011, (Invited)
M. Hafner, L. Caminiti, D. Cunningham, and D. Del Vecchio. Automated
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Collision Avoidance at Intersections. Proc. of World
Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, September 2011.
R. Verma and D. Del Vecchio. Control of Hidden Mode Hybrid
Systems: Algorithm Termination. IEEE Intelligent Transportation
Systems Society Conference, October 2011. (Invited)
J. Duperret, M. Hafner, and D. Del Vecchio. Formal Design of an
Autonomous Roundabout System. Proc. of IEEE International
Conference on Robots and Systems, 2010.
C11.
C12.
C13.
C14.
C15.
C16.
C17.
C18.
C19.
C20.
C21.
C23.
C24.
R. Verma and D. Del Vecchio. Control of Hybrid Systems with Hidden
Modes: Translation to a Perfect Information Problem. Proc. of IEEE
Conference on Decision and Control, 2010.
Del Vecchio. The Effect of Retroactivity on the Frequency Response of
Phosphorylation Cycles. Proc. of IEEE Conference on Decision and
Control, 2010. (Invited)
A. C. Ventura, P. Jiang, L. Van Wassenhove, A. J. Ninfa, S. D. Merajver,
and D. Del Vecchio. The Impact of Retroactivity on the Input/Output
Characteristic of a Signaling Component. ASME Dynamic Systems and
Control Conference, Accepted, 2010. (Invited)
S. Jayanthi and D. Del Vecchio. Design of an Insulation Device based
on Phosphotransfer Systems. Proc. of IEEE International Symposium
on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2010. (Invited)
M. Hafner and D. Del Vecchio. Computation of Safety Control for
Uncertain Piecewise Continuous Systems on a Partial Order. Proc.
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pages 1671-1677, 2009.
R. Verma and D. Del Vecchio. Continuous Control of Hybrid Automata
with Imperfect Mode Information Assuming Separation between State
Estimation and Control. Proc. IEEE Conference on Decision and Control,
pages 3175-3181, 2009.
S. Jayanthi and D. Del Vecchio. On the Compromise between
Retroactivity Attenuation and Noise Amplification in Gene Regulatory
Networks. Proc. IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pages 45654571, 2009. (Invited)
E. Franco, D. Del Vecchio, and R. M. Murray. Design of Insulating
Devices for In Vitro Synthetic Circuits. Proc. IEEE Conference on
Decision and Control, pages 4584-4589, 2009. (Invited)
V. Desaraju, H. C. Ro, M. Yang, E. Tay, S. Roth, and D. Del Vecchio.
Partial Order Techniques for Vehicle Collision Avoidance: Application
to an Autonomous Roundabout. IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, pages 82-87, 2009.
D. Del Vecchio, M. Malisoff, and R. Verma. A Separation Principle for
Hybrid Automata on a Partial Order. American Control Conference,
pages 3638-3643, 2009.
D. Del Vecchio and E. D. Sontag. Engineering Principles in Biomolecular Systems: From Retroactivity to Modularity. European
Control Conference, pages MoB2.2, 2009. (Invited) C22.D. Del Vecchio
and S. Jayanthi. Retroactivity Attenuation in Transcriptional
Networks: Design and Analysis of an Insulation Device. Proc.
Conference on Decision and Control, pages 774-780, 2008. (Invited)
R. Verma, D. Del Vecchio, and H. Fathy. Longitudinal Vehicle
Dynamics Scaling and Implementation on a HIL Setup. Proc. of the
Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, pages 46-57, 2008.
D. Del Vecchio, A. J. Ninfa, and E. D. Sontag. A Systems Theory with
Retroactivity: Application to Transcriptional Modules . Proc. of
American Control Conference, pages 1368-1373, 2008.
C25.
C26.
C27.
C28.
C29.
C30.
C31.
C32.
C33.
C34.
C35.
C36.
C37.
R. Ghaemi and D. Del Vecchio. Evaluating the Robustness of a
Biochemical Network Model. Proc. of Conference on Decision and
Control, pages 615-620, 2007.
D. Del Vecchio. Design and Analysis of an Activator-Repressor Clock
in E. coli. Proc. Of American Control Conference, pages 1589-1594,
2007.
D. Del Vecchio and E. D. Sontag. Dynamics and Control of Synthetic
Bio-molecular Networks. Proc. of American Control Conference, pages
1577-1588, 2007.
D. Del Vecchio. Observer-based Control for Block-triangular Hybrid
Automata. Proc. of Conference on Decision and Control, pages 17821788, 2007. (Invited)
D. Del Vecchio. A Partial Order Approach for Low Complexity Control
of Block Triangular Hybrid Automata. Proc. of Conference on Decision
and Control, pages 3157-3163, 2007.
D. Del Vecchio. Partial Order Techniques for the Analysis and
Synthesis of Hybrid and Embedded Systems. Proc. Conference on
Decision and Control, pages 156-170, 2007.
D. Del Vecchio. A partial order approach to discrete dynamic
feedback in a class of hybrid systems. In Hybrid Systems: Computation
and Control, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4416, A.
Bemporad, A. Bicchi, and G. Buttazzo (Eds.), Springer Verlag, pages
159–173, 2007.
D. Del Vecchio. Discrete dynamic feedback for a class of hybrid
systems on a lattice. In Proc. of 2006 joint IEEE Conference on Control
Applications, IEEE Computer Aided Control Systems Design Symposium,
and IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, pages 15561561, 2006. (Invited)
D. Del Vecchio and R. M. Murray. Existence of cascade discretecontinuous state estimators on a partial order. In Hybrid Systems:
Computation and Control, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol.
3414, M. Morari, L. Thiele, and F. Rossi (Eds.), Springer Verlag, pages
226–241, 2005.
D. Del Vecchio and R. M. Murray. Cascade Discrete-Continuous State
Estimators for a Class of Monotone Systems. Proc. of IFAC World
Congress, 2005.
H. El Samad, D. Del Vecchio, and M. Khammash. Repressilators and
Promotilators: Loop Dynamics in Gene Regulatory Networks. Proc. of
American Control Conference, pages 4405- 4410, 2005.
D. Del Vecchio and R. M. Murray. Existence of Discrete State
Estimators for Hybrid Systems on a Lattice. Proc. of Conference on
Decision and Control, pages 1-6, 2004. (Invited)
C. L. Walton, D. Del Vecchio, and R. M. Murray. Identification of
decision rules in a human controlled system: Vehicles at a traffic
intersection. Proc. of International Conference of Robotics and
Automation, pages 1173-1178, 2004.
C38.
C39.
C40.
C41.
C42.
C43.
C44.
C45.
M. B. Reiser, J. S. Humbert, M. J. Dunlop, D. Del Vecchio, R. M. Murray,
M. H. Dickinson. Vision as a Compensatory Mechanism for Disturbance
Rejection in Upwind Flight. Proc. of American Control Conference,
pages 311- 316, 2004. (Winner of Best Student Paper Award)
D. Del Vecchio and R. M. Murray. Discrete state estimators for a class
of hybrid systems on a lattice. In Hybrid Systems: Computation and
Control, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2993, R. Alur and G.
Pappas (Eds.), Springer Verlag, pages 311–325, 2004.
D. Del Vecchio and E. Klavins. Observation of guarded command
programs. In Conf. on Decision and Control, pages 3353–3359, 2003.
(Invited)
D. Del Vecchio, R. M. Murray, and P. Perona. Classification of Human
Motion into Dynamics Based Primitives with Application to Drawing
Tasks, Proc. of European Control Conference, 2003.
D. Del Vecchio, R. M. Murray, and P. Perona. Segmentation of Human
Motion into Dynamics Based Primitives with Application to Drawing
Tasks, Proc of. American Control Conference, pages 1816-1823, 2003.
D. Del Vecchio, R. M. Murray, and P. Perona. Primitives for human
motion: A dynamical approach. Proc. of IFAC World Congress, 2002.
D. Del Vecchio, R. Marino, and P. Tomei. An Adaptive Learning
Control for Feedback Linearizable Systems. Proc. of American Control
Conference, pages 2817-2821, 2001.
D. Del Vecchio, R. Marino, and P. Tomei. Adaptive Learning Control
for Robot Manipulators. Proc. of American Control Conference, pages
641-645, 2001.