Alessandro Rucco was born in Lecce, Italy, in 1983. He received his Master’s degree in Automation Engineering in 2009 and his Ph.D. in Information Engineering in January 2014 from the Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy. From February to May 2014 he was with the Control Optimization and Robotics (COR) group at the same University. He has been visiting student at the University of Colorado Boulder (January-September 2012) and at the University of Paris Sud, Supélec (March-April 2010). In August 2014 he joined the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. His research interests include applied nonlinear optimal control, modeling, trajectory optimization of car and aerial vehicles.