Andrea Roli is assistant professor ("Ricercatore confermato") at Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. His research areas are complex systems and artificial Intelligence, with focus on biological models, biorobotics, and collective intelligence. His main current research activities involve adaptive mechanisms for robots, information theory, semantic information, and foundational questions related to natural and artificial intelligence, embodied artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of biology. Andrea Roli teaches courses in computer science basics, artificial intelligence and complex systems.
Education
Andrea Roli received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Bologna, Italy.
He got the habilitation to the profession of engineer in 1998.
Academic career
He has been a Assistant Professor ("Ricercatore") in the Dipartimento di Scienze, Università "G. D'Annunzio," Chieti-Pescara, Italy from May 2002 to September 2006. Since October 2006, he is Assistant Professor at Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, campus of Cesena).
Andrea Roli got the habilitation as associate professor both in Data Processing Systems ("Sistemi di elaborazione delle informazioni", 09/H1) on 3/12/2013 and in Computer science ("Informatica", 01/B1) on 29/1/2014.
Scientific activities
Andrea Roli's research interests lie in complex systems and artificial intelligence, with a primary focus on the relation between complex systems and cognitive processes. His research activities encompass bio-inspired robotics, emergent phenomena in complex systems, complex systems biology, and philosophical aspects of complexity. Previously, he also worked on constrained optimization problems and hybrid metaheuristics. Current research lines include adaptation mechanisms for robots in both offline and online scenarios. A parallel line focuses on using genetic regulatory network models as control programs for robots, automatically designed through optimization techniques. This research aims to leverage the richness of cellular dynamics to achieve robust and adaptive artificial systems. In the study of emergent phenomena, Andrea Roli investigates information-theoretic measures for characterizing and designing robotic systems, as well as identifying relevant dynamical structures in complex systems. He is particularly interested in foundational questions related to natural and artificial intelligence, embodied artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of biology. Finally, his work also extends to cognitive processes and emergent phenomena in music—especially early music and continuo—as well as in the field of artificial creativity.
He collaborates with IRIDIA (Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Dèveloppements en Intelligence Artificielle), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels (Belgium). He is ECLT fellow - European Centre for Living Technology (Venezia) and external member of naXys - Namur Center for Complex Systems. In February 2025 he has been awarded the title of senior fellow of BrIAS (Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies).
He has published over 200 papers in international fora, both as journal papers and conference papers (with peer review process). He co-edited 10 books and 4 journal special issues.
He is involved in research projects, both European and Italian ones.
He is co-founder and program chair for the HM Workshop series (Workshop on hybrid metaheuristics) and has been organizer of LSCS (Workshop on local search techniques for constraint satisfaction) in 2005, 2006 and 2007. He has been conference co-chair for CPAIOR2010 (International Conference on Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming), co-organiser of the ECCS 2013 satellite event DySCS - Dynamical Structures in Complex Systems: an information theoretic perspective and program co-chair di WIVACE 2017 (XII Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation).
He is member of the program committee of international conferences and reviewer for international journals in artificial intelligence and complex systems.
Andrea Roli is review editor for Frontiers in evolutionary robotics (Frontiers). He has also been academic editor for Complexity (Wiley-Hindawi), and Intelligenza artificiale (Elsevier).
Andrea Roli is a member of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA) and he has been part of the AI*IA steering commitee from September 2007 to December 2013.
Teaching activities
Since 1999, he teaches university courses in artificial intelligence, computer science and complex systems topics. He has been supervisor of over 80 bachelor and master thesis. He has been supervisor of five PhD thesis.
