Paolo Baldini is a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct professor at the University of Bologna; his research focuses on adaptive robotics, collective multi-agent systems, and unconventional computing systems. He is an adjunct professor for the Software Design and Development course in the Bachelor’s program in Computer Systems Technologies.
Education
Paolo Baldini earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Bologna in March 2026, defending a dissertation titled “Online adaptation of autonomous robots.” Previously, he earned a master’s degree in Engineering and Computer Science from the same university, with a thesis on “Online adaptation of robots controlled by nanowire networks,” graduating with the top grade and honors. As part of the Erasmus+ program, he attended the European Master’s Program in Advanced Robotics at the Warsaw University of Technology. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Bologna, with a thesis titled “Design and Development of a Sensor and Communication Module for the AlpaBot Robotics Platform”, and a diploma in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from the “Blaise Pascal” State Industrial Technical Institute.
Academic Career
Since July 2026, he has been an adjunct professor at the University of Bologna, where he teaches the Software Design and Development course. Since May 2026, he has been a postdoctoral researcher at the same university, where he works on high-level engineering of multi-agent systems as part of the “FoMaSE, Foundations for Macro-programming-based Software Engineering” project. He also served as an academic tutor from 2022 to 2026.
Scientific Activity
Paolo Baldini’s research interests focus on adaptive robotics and complex systems, with a particular emphasis on the mechanisms of continuous adaptation in robots in both offline (i.e., during the design phase) and online (i.e., during execution) scenarios, even in the presence of failures or dynamic tasks. A parallel line of research is dedicated to the use of genetic regulatory networks (Boolean networks) and nanowire networks as control substrates for robotic systems, with the goal of harnessing the richness of cellular and material dynamics to achieve robust and adaptive artificial systems. Another line of research concerns the use of large language models (LLMs) in the generation and evaluation of robot control software, and in the study of their robustness in simulated conversational scenarios. Recently, he has begun to focus on the engineering of collective multi-agent systems with complex interaction dynamics.
In addition, he serves on the program committee and as a reviewer for various international conferences and has co-supervised four master’s theses.
Teaching Activities
Since 2022, he has been teaching at the University of Bologna, first as a teaching assistant for various bachelor’s degree programs and, since July 2026, as an adjunct professor in charge of the Software Design and Development module. He has also participated in career guidance initiatives for high school students as part of the project “In the Shoes of a Robot: How to Program a Robot’s Behavior.”
