Francesco Borrelli is a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he conducts research in the field of predictive control.
He has received several awards for his contributions to the predictive control field, including the 2017 Industrial Achievement Award by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Council and the 2025 Control Practice Award from the American Automatic Control Council.
In 2025, he was appointed chief AI and robotics officer at Nextracker, where he leads the company’s global AI and robotics strategy.
Relevant expertise:
- AI and game theory for autonomous drone teams: Applying mixed AI/RL techniques and game theory to develop autonomous drone strategies for adversarial scenarios like capture the flag
- Data-driven hierarchical control: Developing multi-layered autonomous control structures with continuous learning for strategic planning to low-level operational control
