Gender Male
Dario Izzo graduated in Aeronautical Engineering from the University Sapienza of Rome in 1999. He 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 he 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, Dario moved to ESTEC in the Netherlands as a research fellow in Mission Analysis and, in 2008, became one of two permanent staff members in the team where he now coordinates all the scientific activities of the Advanced Concepts team and manages its interface to the rest of ESA.
During the years spent with ACT, Dario led studies in interplanetary trajectory design and artificial intelligence and took part in several other innovative types of research on diverse fields. He 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 published more than 150 papers in journals, conferences and books.
In 2013, Dario received the Humies Gold Medal for the work on grand tours of the galilean moons and, the following year, won the 8th edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition, organized by NASA/JPL, leading a mixed team of ESA/JAXA scientists.
His interests range from computer science, open source software development, interplanetary trajectory optimization, biomimetics and artificial intelligence, but in general interested in all aspects of science and technology.
