francesco verdoja

Francesco Verdoja received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Turin, Italy, in 2017, specializing in graph-based approaches to image processing. Following graduation, he joined the Intelligent Robotics group at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, where he focused on robotic perception and mapping. In addition to his academic role, Francesco worked part-time as a Senior AI Scientist at AMD Silo AI, contributing to computer vision and machine learning research and development.

Since 2023, he has held an Academy Research Fellow position, supported by a Research Fellowship grant from the Research Council of Finland for his project Hypermaps, which aims to address the complexity gap in robotic mapping through unified spatial, semantic, and dynamic environment representations. At Aalto University, Francesco also serves as Staff Scientist and coordinates the Aalto Robot Lab. His research targets autonomous agents in physical spaces, with a focus on representation-centric approaches that enhance environment understanding, long-term operation, and uncertainty-aware decision-making.

Francesco has published widely in leading robotics and AI venues, holds three patents based on his research, and has secured substantial competitive funding from national agencies and industry. He is an active member of the robotics community, having organized workshops at IROS and ICRA, served as an associate editor and reviewer for major conferences and journals. His work is driven by a long-term vision of embodied AI systems that can operate robustly in complex human-centric environments, grounded in principled models of perception, representation, and interaction.