Maria Domenica Di Benedetto (b. 1953)

Italian professor of automatic control and expert in nonlinear and hybrid system control theory and the applications to traffic control, smart grids, and biological systems.

Affiliation: University of L'Aquila, Italy

“You have to believe that you can do it. You have to practice and make the effort, and it is hard. But never give up!”

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto is an Italian engineer and professor of automatic control. She is mainly known for her advances in the science of nonlinear and hybrid system control theory and its many applications to traffic control, smart grids, and biological systems. She is currently working with her PhD students on applying control theory to the fields of disease diagnostics and therapy.

A pioneer within nonlinear and hybrid systems

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto has always been interested in understanding fundamental control theory and the theoretical aspects of nonlinear control, embedded control systems, hybrid systems, and cyber-physical systems. In the 1990s, Maria Domenica Di Benedetto was attracted by the great promises of integrated wireless sensors and their benefits to society. Later on, her strong interest in the implementation of control in various fields stimulated research within different topics and had her push the boundaries of control applications within a wide range of fields, starting with automotive and air traffic control, through control within the environmental field, and subsequently advancing into the biological and medical fields. Nowadays, a substantial part of her research is focused on the application of control within diabetes and cancer therapy. 

She has produced numerous scientific papers on her topics of interest. 

International collaboration and interdisciplinarity keys to success

One of the most outstanding achievements of Maria Domenica Di Benedetto is the creation of the Center of Excellence DEWS (Design methodologies of Embedded controllers, Wireless interconnect and Systems-on-chip) at the University of L’Aquila in 2001 – the center of excellence being not easily awarded by the Italian ministry. Maria Domenica Di Benedetto has said that the establishment of the center created a nucleus for her research, something solid around which people could interact internationally with other people, the collaborations with other universities being unique for Italy at the time. In addition, she was influenced by the approach of the American universities she had visited, putting together an interdisciplinary group of students and researchers with different competencies – also a novel approach at the time. Maria Domenica Di Benedetto said, "Being able to participate in the everyday life of universities and research organizations in different parts of the world opens your mind and helps build the foundation of your research work." Maria Domenica Di Benedetto was the Principal Investigator (PI) and director of the center until 2019. 

Background and life

Early interest in mathematics

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto has always loved mathematics and physics. Her father was a mathematician, and Maria Domenica Di Benedetto and her sister used to play mathematical games at home, joking about the topic. In addition, she had some excellent teachers growing up, who strongly influenced her choice to become an engineer. 

At university, Maria Domenica Di Benedetto chose to study electrical engineering. She had few female fellow students at the Sapienza University of Rome. There were 350 students in each of the seven groups, and at most two out of the 350 were female. She has said that "Entering the room as a woman was hard. I asked one of my friends to come with me into the room at the beginning of the lecture until I could sit down. Then it was okay."

In the third year of her university studies, she attended a course in systems theory. According to Maria Domenica Di Benedetto, excellent teachers Antonio Roberti and Alberto Sidori (well-known in the control community) sparked her interest in further understanding control and systems theory and resulted in her doing her Master's thesis on the subject. She has said: "You can represent anything with these models. Understanding the properties of the models can affect how you understand engineering design, social sciences, or health. I liked it very much. That is how it started."

Many different positions within the scientific community

After graduating from university, she got a fellowship position at IBM. There, she worked on speech processing. However, she strongly wished to return to university. At the end of the 1970s, she achieved a PhD position at the University of Paris, still keeping her job at IBM with the IBM scientific center being positive about her doing research as long as it was coherent with her work. Her thesis thus focused on speech recognition and the science of modeling and system analysis rather than control. However, during subsequent years, when working as an associate professor at the University of Rome, she approached the subject of control, and in 1994, she became a professor of control theory at the University of L'Aquila, where she stayed until her retirement in 2024. Apart from running the Center of Excellence DEWS (Design of Embedded Systems, Wireless Interconnect and System-on-chip), she has also been a member of the scientific committee of another center of excellence at the University, the Center of Excellence for Research CETEMPS (Telesensing of Environment and Model Prediction of Severe Events), and has co-founded and been a member of the governing board of the start-up company WEST Aquila S.r.L (WEST standing for Wireless Embedded Systems Technologies).

International cooperation was always very important to Maria Domenica Di Benedetto, and she has held positions of adjunct professor and McKay professor at the University of Berkley, visiting scientist at MIT, and visiting professor at the University of Michigan and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Nantes. 

She has been an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) fellow since 2002. Between 2003 and 2007 she was chair of the standing committee of fellow nominations of the IEEE Control Systems Society. She has also been the editor of several prestigious magazines within the field, such as IEEE Transactions of Automatic Control (associate editor and editor at large) and International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control (subject editor), as well as the IEEE Press Book Series in Control Systems Theory and Applications (editor). She was president of the Italian Association of Researchers in Automatic Control (SIDRA) between 2013 and 2019 and president of the European Embedded Control Institute at the University of L'Aquila. In 2019, she was named a fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for contributions to nonlinear and hybrid systems theory and leadership in control research and education.

A curious mind

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto's motivation has always been to try to understand more, a curious mind was a prerequisite for that. She has also said that while working, she did not pay attention to being the only woman. An approach that, according to her, was probably fortunate. 

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto has one daughter. While her daughter was growing up, Maria Domenica Di Benedetto was the only working mum in the class. They frequently discussed the question of why she had to work. Maria Domenica Di Benedetto has said, "I am not saying I felt guilty, but from time to time, I was not feeling comfortable." Luckily, her parents supported and helped take care of her daughter, and even traveled with Maria Domenica Di Benedetto while she was away for her international collaborations.