“Working in a team of experts has been a great experience for me”
From August to December, PhD student Mattia Manenti from University of Catania in Italy is visting Mid Sweden University and STC as part of his doctoral studies. When he soon returns to Italy, he will bring back lots of feedback, inspiration and new ideas.
Within the new collaboration between Mid Sweden University and the University of Catania, PhD student Mattia Manenti spent four months at STC. Together with his supervisor Professor Bruno Andó, Guest Professor at STC, he is working with Sebastian Bader’s team focusing on sensors and smart multi-sensor systems, with applications in areas such as assistive technology. This is an important application field with the goal of creating safer environments and improving quality of life, especially for active aging and well-being.
With a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and a master’s degree in automation engineering and control of complex systems, Mattia is now in the second year of his PhD. He wants to help people with impairments – such as older adults or people with neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.
– One of the main topics of my research is to develop a system for people with Parkinson’s disease that can monitor their status continuously to avoid the risk of falls. There are fall detectors, but they give an alarm after the fall has happened. It would be much better to be able to monitor the status and give an alarm before the fall, so you can prevent it from happening, says Mattia.
Expertise and teamwork
When he arrived in Sundsvall in August, Mattia had little experience with machine learning and had not yet been able to test his ideas. Getting the chance to do so has been one of the experiences he values most from STC – along with the opportunity to get feedback from a team of experts.
– I am not used to having colleagues around me who can give me feedback on how to improve results related to machine learning algoritms. Working in a team of experts within this field has been a great experience for me. They basically inspired me to work on what I have never tried and that has given me lots of new ideas, says Mattia.
Returning home to Italy in the beginning of December, Mattia has two years left in on his PhD. He will continue to work close to his supervisor Professor Bruno Andó and Sebastian Bader’s team. In addition, he still has a couple of more months to do abroad – and he already has an idea of where he would like to go next.
– We have a collaboration with another research team in Canada working with this kind of application for assistive technology, and I think it would be very interesting to go there, says Mattia.