Alessandro Borgherini finalist for the IEEE CSS Italy Best Thesis Award 2026

We are very pleased to share that Alessandro Borgherini was selected as a finalist for the IEEE CSS Italy Best Thesis Award 2026 for his Master’s thesis, “One-Shot Imitation Learning for Aerial Physical Interaction Tasks via Sensitivity-Guided Data Augmentation.” 

The thesis was carried out under the supervision of Maximilian Mehl and myself and focused on learning-based control for aerial physical interaction. In particular, the work investigated how sensitivity-guided data augmentation can be used to improve imitation learning from a limited number of expert demonstrations. This recognition is a great acknowledgement of the quality of Alessandro’s work and of the research developed during his Master’s thesis.

A special thanks goes to Maximilian Mehl for closely guiding Alessandro throughout the project, both on the research methodology and on the technical development.

Congratulations Alessandro!