Semi-Plenary Lecture 3

Room: Audimax
Time: Wednesday, 30. September 2026, 9:40 - 10:20
Chair: Wangji Yan

Alice Cicirello

Assistant Professor
Cambridge University Engineering Department, UK

Opportunities in M.U.S.I.C and N.O.I.S.E. for Monitoring and modelling complex dynamical systems

This talk will focus on describing challenges and opportunities for monitoring and modelling complex systems by using hybrid physics-knowledge-data models, and the need of explainable and interpretable machine learning strategies for engineering applications. State-of-the-art hybrid physics-knowledge-data approaches (also known as Physics-Enhanced Machine Learning strategies) developed within the Data, Vibration and Uncertainty group are going to be summarised, and real-world engineering applications, explored with outstanding collaborators around the world, spanning from laboratory setups to bridges and ferry quays are going to be showcased.
In particular, the talk will focus on Data challenges in Engineering. Beyond the fact that Data is expensive to acquire, the challenges of M.U.S.I.C (Multimodal, Uncertain, Sparse, Incomplete data, which might be Corrupted by confounding influences) are going to be discussed. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that we are typically interest in N.O.I.S.E.: Non-smooth and not necessarily Observable phenomena, for which we might access to Indirect measurements, and ideally also some Simulated data of partially known model, and typically, we care about Extreme or rare events. These challenges, make the integration of physics-data-knowledge a very exciting field of research with the potential of providing explainable, interpretable, fast and accurate solutions that can extrapolate to unseen conditions in the data, inform physics, and identify key measurements/experiments to be carried out.

Short Bio

Dr Alice Cicirello is an academic in the Cambridge University Engineering Department and a Fellow of Churchill College. She is the founder and head of the Data, Vibration and Uncertainty group. Alice is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Research Fellow (2023- present), and Executive board member of the European Association of Structural Dynamics. Alice setup and chaired the first three workshops on Physics-Enhancing Machine Learning in Applied Mechanics, is serving in the Editorial boards of academic journals and in the scientific committee and organising committee of several international workshops and conferences.

Alice obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2013. She was a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher (2009-2012) and a Research Associate (2012-2014) at the same institution. Alice worked as a Senior Research Scientist at SLB (2014-2017) and returned to academia as a Lecturer at the University of Oxford (Engineering Science Department and Balliol College, 2017-2019), and then continued as Associate Professor and Section Head at TU Delft (2020-2023). Alice held visiting positions at several research institutions, including MIT and Alan Turing Institute.