New frontiers in imaging and digital twins: an ERC Advanced Grant at Politecnico di Torino worth 2.5 million euros
Funding of 2.5 million euros to pioneer computational electromagnetism and improve the efficiency of the mathematical models underpinning the digital twins employed in research, medicine and industry. This is the aim of TESSERHACK, the project led by Professor Francesco Andriulli of the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications-DET at Politecnico di Torino, which has been selected by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the Advanced Grant scheme – one of the most prestigious and competitive European programmes dedicated to cutting-edge research.
Computational electromagnetism plays a crucial role in many everyday technologies, ranging from medical devices to telecommunications systems. It also underpins the tools we use to design, simulate, and test complex systems through digital twins – virtual models that can replicate real-world behavior.
Nevertheless, the growing complexity of these technologies requires ever-increasing amounts of computing power, memory and energy. TESSERHACK aims to tackle precisely this challenge by developing new mathematical and algorithmic tools capable of drastically reducing the computational cost required to analyse and interpret complex electromagnetic phenomena.
The project specifically focuses on accelerating so-called inverse problems, which enable the reconstruction of information that cannot be directly observed from external measurements. This is the foundation of many imaging techniques: from biomedical applications for the non-invasive study of brain activity to the identification of anomalies within an object or a device without physically interfering with it.
TESSERHACK’s innovative idea is to radically rethink the very way in which these problems are tackled, by working directly on the mathematical models that describe the physical phenomenon. The project thus aims to reduce the time and resources required to produce advanced simulations and reconstructions by orders of magnitude.
"The capacity to generate highly accurate virtual models is now crucial for both scientific research and the industrial advancement of new technologies – states Professor Francesco Andriulli – With TESSERHACK, our goal is to significantly enhance the efficiency of these processes, allowing analyses and reconstructions that currently take years of computation and require extensive resources to be completed more quickly and at a lower cost".
The potential implications range from neuroimaging and advanced medical diagnostics to the design of increasingly sophisticated electromagnetic systems for electronics and telecommunications, right through to the development of innovative technologies in the energy and industrial processes sectors based on efficient simulations, virtual testing and non-destructive testing. The drastic reduction in computational cost could have a twofold impact. On the one hand, it could facilitate the development of more compact and portable devices, such as brain imaging instruments that can be used directly on board an ambulance. On the other hand, it could enable the extraction of more precise and richer information from measurements. Whilst this will improve imaging applications in support of medical and neurological research, it will also pave the way in the industrial sector for increasingly sophisticated diagnostic monitoring and device design systems – potentially in real time – for advanced electromagnetic engineering.
The project will be developed within the Computational Electromagnetics Research Lab (CERL) led by Professor Andriulli, a research laboratory at Politecnico di Torino that combines electronic engineering, high-performance computing and applied mathematics, focusing on the development of low-complexity numerical methods and solvers to model complex electromagnetic systems.
This result reaffirms Politecnico di Torino’s leading role in international research and its ability to generate cutting-edge knowledge with significant potential to impact society and technological innovation.