Dario Izzo

I graduated in Aeronautical Engineering from the University Sapienza of Rome in 1999. I later obtained a second master in “Satellite Platforms” at the University of Cranfield in the UK and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Modelling in 2003, at the University Sapienza of Rome where I had the honour to assist Prof. Chiara Valente throughout the classical mechanics and space flight mechanics courses during the academic years 2001-2003.

In 2004, I moved to ESTEC in the Netherlands as a research fellow in Mission Analysis and, in 2008, I became one of two permanent staff members in the team where I now coordinate all the scientific activities of the Advanced Concepts team and manage its interface to the rest of ESA.

During the years spent with tha ACT, I led studies in interplanetary trajectory design and artificial intelligence and I took part in several other innovative researches on diverse fields. I started the Global Trajectory Optimization Competitions events, the ESA’s Summer of Code in Space, and the Kelvins competition platform (https://kelvins.esa.int/) and I published more than 150 papers in journals, conferences and books.

In 2013, I received the Humies Gold Medal for the work on grand tours of the galilean moons and, the following year, I won the 8th edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition, organized by NASA/JPL, leading a mixed team of ESA/JAXA scientists.

My interests range from computer science, open source software development, interplanetary trajectory optimization, biomimetics and artificial intelligence, but I am in general interested in all aspects of science and technology.

My hobbies are playing music, computer gaming in both of which I am quite bad :(

My favourite band? Clearly The Beatles, and my favorite quote from them: "But the fool on the hill Sees the sun going down And the eyes in his head See the world spinning round…", which I like to think applies quite well to the Advanced Concepts Team.