Francesca has just handed in her PhD thesis and she is going to give a presentation on her Phd project on dynamic yacht strategy optimisation. During the past years at IES she has developed a model based on Artificial Neural Networks and Dynamic Programming to help skippers take the best decisions while racing. In this seminar she is going to present the results of simulations that show how the past America's Cup might have ended if the skippers had followed her advice... (or not?)

 

Francesca was awarded a master’s degree in Mathematics at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) in 2011. In the same year she was awarded a competitive scholarship funded by the School of Marine Science and Technology of the University of Newcastle where she started her PhD under the supervision of Dr Viola. Her PhD project aims at the development of software that can be used on board during a yacht race to suggest the best course of actions to a tactician. Francesca moved to Edinburgh in 2013, where she is now finalising her doctoral studies as she just submitted her thesis. Besides her PhD project she is working on wind modelling for wind farms applications and on financial modelling of electricity markets.

Find more on Francesca’s project and publications on ResearchExplorer.