Control Engineering

Sapienza's Quality Assurance (QA) System is described in detail on the Quality Team's web pages, which can be consulted at https://www.uniroma1.it/it/pagina/team-qualita.

The web pages describe the ten-year process developed by the University to establish Sapienza's Quality Assurance system, the organizational model adopted, the QA stakeholders (Quality Team, Monitoring Committees, Joint Teacher-Student Committees, Study Program Quality Committees), the active Working Groups, the main activities developed, and the documentation prepared for the management of Quality Assurance processes and activities in Teaching, Research, and the Third Mission.

The web pages also serve as a platform for communication and for providing reference data for review activities, for drafting reports by the Joint Teacher-Student Committees and Monitoring Committees, and for compiling the SUA-Teaching and SUA-Research forms.
Each degree program and each department then has the right to adapt the Sapienza Quality Assurance Model defined on the Quality Team's web pages in the Quality Assurance section of the degree program/department, borrowing and adapting it to its own organizational specificities while complying with the models and procedures defined by ANVUR and the Quality Team.
The Degree Program/Department web pages, together with the SUA-Teaching and SUA-Research forms, are the tools used to communicate how the Quality Assurance System is implemented at the Degree Program/Department level.

The Quality Management Committee (CGQ) is made up of the President of the CdS, other faculty members, a technical-administrative staff unit, and a student.
The CGQ normally meets quarterly and at the end of each year for overall monitoring. It also meets to work on deadlines relating to the SUA frameworks and whenever the opportunity or need arises, at the request of the members of the CGQ itself or at the request of students or teachers.

The team monitors the teaching activities of the CdS, including organizational and logistical aspects, as well as evaluating and disseminating the results of student and faculty opinion surveys. In collaboration with the relevant faculty, the CdS conducts a survey of student opinion (attending and non-attending) for all courses under its jurisdiction. The survey system is integrated with a quality process for which the program's quality team and monitoring committee are responsible. The results of the surveys and analyses are used to promote actions to improve educational activities. In addition, the team follows the path of master's degree graduates as they enter the world of work and research, using both AlmaLaurea survey tools and its own questionnaires.
Through the QA management group, the degree program will monitor teaching activities, including organizational and logistical aspects, through regular meetings and will propose any necessary improvements. It will evaluate the results of the adoption of these improvements, highlighting the strengths that have emerged, any critical issues, and the changes deemed necessary. it will verify the adequacy and effectiveness of the management of the study program; it will propose, where necessary, corrective actions to be included in the Review Report. The meeting schedule will be set after the University has completed its obligations. Typically, meetings are held 3-4 times a year, particularly when the Annual Monitoring Report is being drafted.

Companies have been consulted systematically at faculty level since 2006 through the ‘Diamoci Credito’ Memorandum of Understanding, now reconfirmed on July 11, 2008. The areas of interest identified are: the design and evaluation of study programs to develop an offering tailored to the needs of the world of work, the integration of business skills into the training process of degree programs, the orientation of incoming and outgoing students, and the activation of research programs of interest between departments and large companies.
On 2/12/08, the steering and control committee met for the final review of the 2009/10 training offer. The offer was approved. On 05/12/2008, Tecnip expressed a favorable opinion on the establishment of the course.
At the final meeting of the university-level consultation on January 19, 2009, considering the results of the previous online consultation, the organizations involved gave a favorable assessment of the rationalization of Sapienza's course offerings, aimed not only at reducing the number of courses but also at diversifying them into classes that are highly attractive and for which there is more than adequate teaching coverage. Furthermore, after evaluating the Faculty's Educational Offer in detail, the organizations themselves expressed a favorable opinion on the establishment of individual courses.

CONSULTATIONS WITH COMPANIES CONDUCTED BY FACULTY MEMBERS OF THE CONTROL ENGINEERING DEGREE PROGRAM

Since 2013, the professors of the Degree Program (CdS) in Automatic Engineering (hereinafter referred to as “CdS” for brevity) have held consultations with various companies, research bodies, goods and services production organizations, and professionals, both nationally and internationally. For simplicity, these interlocutors will be referred to collectively as ‘companies’. The consultations took place through face-to-face meetings and/or telematic tools, often organised as part of research projects conducted in collaboration between the CdS teachers and the companies themselves.

In particular, at the national level, repeated consultations were held with Elis, Enel, GS Automation, IREN, Leonardo, On-Air, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Technip, Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space Italia (TASI), TIM, and Whoosnap. At the international level, contacts were developed and maintained with ArianeGroup (France), CEA (France), CNES (France), and Eurecat (Spain).

During these consultations:

- representatives of the CdS illustrated to the companies the skills acquired by recent graduates and doctoral students in Control Engineering, as well as the research projects in which CdS professors are involved;

- representatives of the companies involved (generally technical staff) presented their activities in research projects, both those developed with members of the CdS and others that use automation methodologies. They also outlined the skills required to carry out these projects, assessing the possible recruitment of recent master's graduates in Control Engineering into the companies themselves.

These consultations have led to significant results for the CdS, including:

- Recruitment of recent graduates: Recent master's degree graduates in Control Engineering have found suitable employment positions at the companies consulted. Many of them have maintained close relationships with the program's faculty, contributing to scientific production, supporting teaching (through seminars, co-supervision of theses, etc.), and involving faculty in new research projects.

- Participation in applied research projects: Faculty members, research fellows, doctoral students, scholarship recipients, contract workers, and students in the degree program have taken part in research projects funded by entities such as the European Union, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy (MIMIT), the Ministry of University and Research (MUR), and the Lazio Region. This funding has enabled many master's degree graduates in Control Engineering to continue their university studies through research grants, scholarships, and collaboration contracts, with significant results in terms of scientific articles and other research outcomes. Among the most relevant projects developed since 2015 are seven major Horizon 2020 projects (Atena, Bonvoyage, Comanoid, Sesame, Symplexity, 5G-AllStar, 5G Solutions), two Horizon Europe projects (Nancy, Shield), two MIMIT projects (Caduceo, Clips), three ESA projects (Aries, Aries-Demo, Vadus), a large PON-MUR project (Platino), and several direct collaboration projects with TASI.

- Impact on teaching: Some methodologies and applications deriving from the above research projects have been integrated into the teaching of the master's degree in Control Engineering. These include the courses ‘Control of Autonomous Multi-Agent Systems’, ‘Control of Communication and Energy Networks’, ‘Control Problems in Robotics’, ‘Intelligent and Hybrid Control’, ‘Process Automation’ and ‘Robotics 2’. In addition, these methodologies have been incorporated into other courses, such as ‘Applications of Automation’ in the Bachelor's degree program in Computer Engineering and Automation, and ‘Systems and Control Methods for Cyber-Physical Security’ in the Master's degree program in Cybersecurity. Representatives from the companies have often given seminars in these courses. Control Engineering students have also developed numerous master's theses based on the above projects, as well as projects and dissertations within the scope of the courses, both at the University and at the companies themselves.

For the companies with which consultations have been most intense, significant conclusions have emerged on the importance of encouraging research in specific scientific areas, with the aim of considering them:

1. in the teaching programs of the master's degree in Control Engineering;

2. as topics for master's theses;

3. in the context of current and future collaborations between the CdS and companies.

Below is a summary of the results of consultations with some of these companies:

- ENEL (since 2013): promoting research and collaborations on electric vehicle charging control, renewable energy grid integration, and grid frequency regulation.

- TASI (since 2013): promoting techniques for the timely detection of threats to satellites in flight, for maximizing the use of satellite resources, and for applications based on the Galileo system.

- Telespazio (since 2013): developing deep learning and data fusion techniques for Earth observation, satellite formation control, radio resource management for satellite communications, and the creation of digital twins of satellites and landers.

- TIM (2013 to present): encouraging the development of artificial intelligence models for the automatic detection of attacks or failures in 5G/6G networks, edge computing technologies for virtual reality, autonomous driving, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, network virtualization technologies, and solutions for the energy and ecological sustainability of telecommunications infrastructure.

- Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital (2019 to present): promoting intelligent systems for optimizing patient pathways, artificial intelligence methodologies to support prevention, diagnosis, and prognosis, and AI techniques for cognitive rehabilitation.

- On-Air (since 2022 to present): encouraging the control of drone configuration and training, the planning of defense and flight patterns for drone swarms, and the analysis of data collected by drones.

Finally, it should be noted that the CdS has a Steering Committee composed of the CdS commission for relations with companies and the CdS commission for the revision of the master's degree programs in Control Engineering. The objective of this Steering Committee is to convey appropriately selected company requests/needs within the teaching programs.

For more details, see the documentation on the website https://www.diag.uniroma1.it/consultazioni/25634.

CONSULTATIONS WITH COMPANIES CARRIED OUT BY THE CDS IN COLLABORATION WITH OTHER DEGREE COURSES

In 2016, the Faculty of Information Engineering, Computer Science, and Statistics conducted consultations on the educational projects of all its degree programs by organizing a meeting with about twenty representatives from the goods and services production sector and the professional world. In addition, Cesop Communication launched a survey on organizations' knowledge and perception of the training provided by the Faculty's degree programs and their perceived quality. All organizations considered the topics covered in the Faculty's courses and the expected employment opportunities to be valid and interesting, but recommended increasing the cross-disciplinary nature of the degree programs (already partially present in inter-faculty and inter-departmental courses). They also stressed how important it is, for the purposes of placement on the job market, for students to graduate on time and to begin collaborating with the world of work during their studies. This can be achieved by increasing the presence of company testimonials within the courses and by activating research projects, internships, and collaborations in the writing of theses. The organizations interviewed expressed their full cooperation in implementing these aspects.

In 2017, on the initiative of the Faculty of Information Engineering, Computer Science, and Statistics, Cesop Communication conducted a focus group to analyze the reputation and quality of the Faculty's degree programs. The companies involved, including Capgemini, Altran, Fater, TIM, Deloitte, and Infocert, provided important feedback. In the same year, these companies hired approximately 2,000 people with professional profiles consistent with those trained by the Faculty's degree programs: 73.5% were graduates, and the most common contract type was permanent (67.4%). Among the most sought-after professionals, computer engineers and computer scientists were the most successful, accounting for an average of 19.8% of hires and proving potentially interesting for 22.3% of future job opportunities.

During the 2023/24 academic year, the Control Engineering degree program, in collaboration with the other degree programs of the Department of Computer Engineering, Automation and Management (DIAG) ‘Antonio Ruberti’ at Sapienza University of Rome, has initiated a process of periodic consultation with stakeholders to adapt the educational offering to the needs of the labor market, also in response to Ministerial Decree No. 1648 of December 19, 2023. This process involved representatives from twenty companies, including Epasa-Itaco, TIM, Terna Rete Italia, Telespazio SPA, and the Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, which all completed a specific questionnaire.

The consultations revealed a strong appreciation for the professional profiles trained by the master's degree in Control Engineering. In particular, the methodological-theoretical skills and practical design abilities acquired by graduates were considered indispensable for meeting the current needs of the job market and for future prospects. The companies expressed full satisfaction, judging the graduates to be in line with the sector's requirements for the next 5-10 years. In addition, the value of a solid education in basic scientific subjects (mathematics, physics, statistics) was emphasized, supplemented by transversal skills such as programming, teamwork, the ability to develop project proposals, and public communication.

Most companies expressed their willingness to actively collaborate with the degree program through activities such as seminars, projects, exercises, and theses, thus contributing to the training of highly qualified engineers ready to enter the job market.

For more details, see the documents/minutes on the website https://www.diag.uniroma1.it/consultazioni/25634.

CONSULTATIONS WITH STUDENTS, FORMER STUDENTS, AND DOCTORAL STUDENTS OF THE MASTER'S DEGREE PROGRAM IN CONTROL ENGINEERING

Since 2013, the Control Engineering degree program has conducted numerous consultations with students, former students, and doctoral students, receiving positive feedback on the opportunities offered by the program. In particular, the high level of methodological and theoretical preparation and the integration into national and international projects, which allow the knowledge acquired to be applied in advanced technological fields such as telecommunications, energy, transport, aerospace, health, and automotive, have been appreciated.

These elements have fostered direct contact with leading companies, both nationally and internationally, opening up highly interesting career prospects. In addition, the proposals relating to the new regulations were welcomed, thanks to the aim of making the educational program clearer and more focused, with specific attention to the skills and professional profiles required by the market.

For further details, please refer to the official minutes of the consultations available in the documents/minutes section of the website https://www.diag.uniroma1.it/consultazioni/25634.