Giuseppe Cuccu

Hello, I'm Giuse (pron. "Joozeh"),

I'm an IDSIA PhD candidate at USI under the supervision of Faustino Gomez and Jürgen Schmidhuber.

Short bio

I was born on the mountainous interiors of the Island of Sardinia (IT). I got both my BSc and MSc in Computer Science in Milan at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, under the supervision of Leonardo Vanneschi.

I'm an eclectic, playful and passionate person. I love literature, foreign languages, martial arts, strategy, sports, cooking, videogames, engineering, motors (particularly motorbikes), and much more. I have a broad curiosity and I like to share it.

Research interests

My main interest lies in machine learning applications for non-linear control. I mostly work with evolved neural networks for reinforcement learning control tasks. My efforts are focused on fitness estimation, explicit exploration and problem scaling.

I always try to keep science in contact with reality, hence I often look for inspiration in game intelligence and robotics. I'm a big fan of the Lisp programming language, although I presently code mostly in Mathematica. I'm also an addicted but non-religious linux user since 2004.

Keywords: Machine Learning, Problem Scaling, Non-linear Controls, Evolutionary Computation, Recurrent Neural Networks, NeuroEvolution, Reinforcement Learning, Fitness Estimation, Explicit Exploration, Game Intelligence, Evolutionary Robotics.

Honors and awards

• October 2009: Best Paper Award of the conference ICEC 2009, for the paper "A Study of Genetic Programming Variable Population Size for Dynamic Optimization Problems", L. Vanneschi and G. Cuccu.
• 2009: Summa cum Laude grade from Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, based on career and thesis outcome.
• 2003-09: Scholarship from Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, based on career.

Teaching experience

1. September 11 Thesis field supervisor - Master Course, Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Lugano (CH)
   Alessandro Andreani - A Mathematica-YARP Interface for Robotic Controller Neuroevolution - [ pdf ]
   Awarded a score of 10/10 and praised for outstanding breadth and complexity.

2. April 10: Thesis official supervisor - Bachelor Course, Università di Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB), Milano (IT)
   Marko Bojovic - Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies: Studio, Implementazione ed Estensione - [ pdf ]
   First collaboration between IDSIA and UNIMIB.
   Awarded a score of 9/10 and praised for its innovative content.

3. Fall semester 09: Teaching Assistant - Master Course, Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI)
   Intelligent Systems
   Achieved maximum TA grade, with positive nominations from both university staff and students.
   Different students asked for a stage position after the course; one was ultimately accepted with prominent results (see Andreani above).

Book chapters

• Studies in Computational Intelligence, 2011, Volume 343/2011, 121-134
  Reconstructing Dynamic Target Functions by Means of Genetic Programming Using Variable Population Size, Leonardo Vanneschi and Giuseppe Cuccu - [ ref ]

Journal Publications

1. V. Graziano, T. Glasmachers, T. Schaul, L. Pape, G. Cuccu, J. Leitner, J. Schmidhuber.
   Artificial Curiosity for Autonomous Space Exploration.
   Acta Futura Journal 4:41-51, 2011 (DOI: 10.2420/AF04.2011.41)
   [ pdf | ref | code ]
   
   

Conference Publications

Open Source Utilities

• rbackup - Remote backup utility, based on rsync and completely safe
• sshkeyauth - Sets up password-less ssh access setup via shared keys - warning, will overwrite your configuration
• sshconf - Constructs server configuration for ~/.ssh/config, completely safe
• icub_install - iCub install script (to come)

Contact

• 
  +41 (0)58 666 6669
  
  
• IDSIA
  c.a. Cuccu
  Galleria 2,
  6928 Manno
  Switzerland
  
  
• IDSIA
  South east corner, floor 2
  Room 224
  
  
cv