Profile
Andrea Serani is a Research Scientist at the Institute of Marine Engineering of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-INM), where he works on multidisciplinary analysis and design optimization. Since 2026, he has also been an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna, teaching Computer-Aided Yacht Design within the MSc programme in Nautical Engineering at the Forlì Campus.
His research interests concern computational design and optimization of engineering systems, with particular emphasis on simulation-based design optimization, design-space learning and dimensionality reduction, surrogate and multi-fidelity modelling, and machine-learning methods for engineering design. His main applications are in marine engineering, ship and marine shape design and optimization, and the integration of numerical models at different levels of fidelity.
Education and career
He received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 2009 and his MSc in Aeronautical Engineering in 2012 from Roma Tre University. In 2016, he obtained a PhD in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the same University, with a dissertation on hybrid global/local optimization methods for simulation-based shape design. During his doctoral studies, he was a visiting PhD student at IIHR–Hydroscience & Engineering, University of Iowa, working on design-space assessment for CFD-based ship design optimization.
Since 2013, he has carried out research at CNR-INSEAN, later incorporated into CNR-INM, initially as a PhD fellow and postdoctoral research fellow and, since 2019, as a Research Scientist. He has also held visiting research positions at the University of Iowa and, in 2025 and 2026, at the Aaron Friedman Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory of the University of Michigan.
He obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification for Associate Professor in 2023 and for Full Professor in 2024 in Aeronautical, Aerospace and Naval Engineering.
Research activities
His research focuses on the development of efficient methodologies for the computational design and optimization of complex systems. Particular attention is devoted to design-space dimensionality reduction, compact representations of geometric variability, surrogate and multi-fidelity modelling, optimization under uncertainty, and data-driven methods for the analysis and design of marine systems.
He has participated in several national and international research projects funded by, among others, the European Commission, the Italian Ministry of University and Research, the Italian National Research Council, the Italian Navy, and the US Office of Naval Research. He has served as Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator, Work Package Leader and Task Leader. Since 2026, he has been Principal Investigator of BEAM – Bayesian Exploration and optimization for hull-form Architecture and producibility Modeling, funded by the US Office of Naval Research.
He has also been involved for more than a decade in the activities of the NATO Science and Technology Organization, Applied Vehicle Technology Panel. Since 2024, he has served as co-chair of Research Task Group AVT-404 – Enhanced Design Processes of Military Vehicles through Machine Learning Methods.
Teaching and academic advising
He has been involved in university teaching since 2015 on simulation-based design optimization and computational methods for engineering design. He has delivered lectures and courses at Roma Tre University, in advanced training activities in aeronautical engineering, and within the NATO STO Research Lecture Series on multi-fidelity methods for multidisciplinary design optimization. Since 2026, he has taught Computer-Aided Yacht Design at the University of Bologna.
He has co-supervised PhD, MSc and BSc theses on simulation-based optimization, dimensionality reduction, multi-fidelity modelling, machine learning, and marine and aeronautical design.
Scientific and institutional activities
He serves on scientific committees and organizes invited sessions at international conferences in computational mechanics, marine engineering, optimization and artificial intelligence for engineering design. He has also served on the Manoeuvring Technical Committee of the International Towing Tank Conference.
He performs editorial and peer-review activities for international scientific journals. He is currently an Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports, Journal of Marine Engineering & Technology, Applied Sciences, Algorithms and Computation, and has served as Guest Editor and on advisory and editorial panels in computational engineering and applied mathematics.
In 2026, he received the AVT Young Contributor Award from the NATO Science and Technology Organization, and in 2024 he contributed to the activities of AVT-331, recipient of the AVT Panel Excellence Award.
