Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering

Ruggiero is a third-year PhD student in Operations Research at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.
Under the supervision of professor Laura Palagi, Ruggiero is working on optimization methods for Machine/Deep Learning models. So far, he has been working on speeding up the training of Deep Neural Networks by the definition of decomposition optimization algorithms with sound theoretical properties. Moreover, he also worked on the definition of a scheduling problem for the solution of Curriculum Learning problems in a Reinforcement Learning setting, making learning procedure more robust and effective.
Ruggiero had the pleasure of being a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, where in collaboration with Professor Steve Wright he worked on the definition of a new regularization term able to cut down the overfitting phenomenon when dealing with Lagrange polynomials.
From August till December he joined IBM for a research period in the Data Science Elite team in Munich where I worked on applications of Machine Learning and Optimization and their integration.
Apart from theoretical researches, he has also been involved in more hands-on projects by supervising many master students during their thesis project and by taking part in more practical research topics. In collaboration with the hospital “Sant’Andrea” in Rome, he is working on the application of Machine/Deep Learning techniques for forecasting Multiple sclerosis evolution in patients affected by this disease.
As a Ph.D. student, he has also been involved in different teaching activities by covering the role of Tutor in OR in two different Engineering departments at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.