News

2026

• I'm joining the organizing committee for the 2026 edition of the Reinforcement Learning Summer School (RLSS) in Milan!
• I've coded the ELLIS Italy website! Check out the website.
• Our new preprint, "Learning in Markov Decision Processes with Exogenous Dynamics," is now available on arXiv.

2025

• I'm attending EWRL 2025 in Tübingen, Germany, to present our new benchmark suite for evaluating reinforcement learning in realistic domains, Gym4ReaL.
• Excited to be participating in the Machine Learning Summer School 2025 (MLSS) in Arequipa, Peru!
• One paper and one workshop paper accepted at IJCNN 2025 in Rome, Italy! I also received the IJCNN 2025 Student Travel Grant for my contribution. Check out the proceedings. I'm also chairing the session Reinforcement Learning II.
• Our paper on digital twins for battery energy storage systems has been published in the Journal of Energy Storage.
• I'm giving a talk on Deterministic Policy Gradient Methods at the AirLab RL3 PhD meetings at Politecnico di Milano.

2024

• I'm attending EWRL 2024 in Toulouse, France. Come say hi if you are there!
• I'm giving a talk on Reinforcement Learning at the RSE Academy Seminar in Milan! Check out the slides.
• Our paper regarding the Air Hockey Challenge 2023 has been accepted at the NeurIPS Competition Track 2023 and is available here.

2023

• Transitioning from student to teacher! I'm serving as an adjunct lecturer for the Informatica B course (B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering) at Politecnico di Milano, under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Trovò.
• We're participating in the Air Hockey Challenge 2023, placing in the top 5 teams! Check out the leaderboard.
• I'm attending the Synapse 2023 - AI Symposium in Milan, Italy!

2022

• Leaving my position as Junior Performance Consultant at Moviri S.p.A. to start my Ph.D. at Politecnico di Milano!
• I'm presenting our work on optimal real-time control of water distribution systems undergoing cyber-attacks at the 2nd IFAC Workshop on Control Methods for Water Resource Systems (CMWRS) in Milan, Italy.
• We're presenting our work on optimal real-time control of water distribution systems undergoing cyber-attacks at the EGU General Assembly 2022 in Vienna, Austria.

Publications

International Conferences

[C1] Davide Salaorni, Federico Bianchi, Francesco Trovò and Marcello Restelli. A Reinforcement Learning Approach for Optimal Control in Microgrids. Proceedings of the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Network (IJCNN), Rome, Italy. 2025.
[Link] [Paper] [Slides]

[C2] Andrés Murillo, Davide Salaorni, Riccardo Taormina and Stefano Galelli. Optimal real-time control of water distribution systems undergoing cyber-physical attacks (Abstract). EGU General Assembly, Vienna, Austria. 2022.
[Link] [Slides]

Journals

[J1] Davide Salaorni, Federico Bianchi, Silvia Colnago, Andrea Barisione, Francesco Trovò and Marcello Restelli. A novel digital twin for battery energy storage systems in micro-grids. Journal of Energy Storage, Elsevier. 2025.
[Link]

[J2] Andrés Murillo, Riccardo Taormina, Nils Ole Tippenhauer, Davide Salaorni, Robert van Dijk, Luc Jonker, Simcha Vos, Maarten Weyns, Stefano Galelli. High-fidelity cyber and physical simulation of water distribution systems. I: Models and Data. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, ASCE. 2023.
[Link]

Workshops

[W1] Davide Salaorni, Vincenzo De Paola, Samuele Delpero, Giovanni Dispoto, Paolo Bonetti, Alessio Russo, Giuseppe Calcagno, Francesco Trovò, Matteo Papini, Alberto Maria Metelli, Marco Mussi and Marcello Restelli. Gym4ReaL: A Benchmark Suite for Evaluating Reinforcement Learning in Realistic Domains. European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL), Tubingen, Germany. 2025.
[Link] [Paper] [Poster]

[W2] Samuele Delpero, Davide Salaorni and Marcello Restelli. Optimal Energy Management of Renewable Energy Communities: a Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach. Machine Learning for Sustainable Power Systems (ML4SPS), ECML-PKDD, Porto, Portugal. 2025.
[Paper] [Slides]

[W3] Davide Salaorni, Federico Bianchi, Francesco Trovò and Marcello Restelli. Leveraging Reinforcement Learning for Micro-grid Optimal Control. Deep Learning Techniques for Observable Smart Grid and Sustainable Energy Systems (DLT-4-OSGE), IJCNN, Rome, Italy. 2025.
[Paper] [Slides]

[W4] Davide Salaorni, Andrés Murillo, Marcello Restelli and Stefano Galelli. Optimal Real Time Control of Water Distribution System undergoing Cyber-Attacks: a Reinforcement Learning approach. 2nd IFAC Workshop on Control Methods for Water Resource Systems (CMWRS), Milan, Italy. 2022.
[Link]

Book Chapters

[B1] Davide Salaorni, Federico Bianchi, Marcello Restelli and Francesco Trovò. Automatic Control and Reinforcement Learning Techniques for Microgrids. Advances in Digital Twin Computing and Sensor Networks, Elsevier. Under review.
[Link - To Appear]

Preprints

[P1] Davide Maran^*, Davide Salaorni^* and Marcello Restelli. Learning in Markov Decision Processes with Exogenous Dynamics. ArXiv:2603.02862. 2026
[Paper]

[P2] Davide Salaorni, Vincenzo De Paola, Samuele Delpero, Giovanni Dispoto, Paolo Bonetti, Alessio Russo, Giuseppe Calcagno, Francesco Trovò, Matteo Papini, Alberto Maria Metelli, Marco Mussi and Marcello Restelli. Gym4ReaL: A Suite for Benchmarking Real-World Reinforcement Learning. ArXiv:2507.00257. 2025.
[Paper]

Talks and Seminars

Education

Ph.D. in Information Technology - Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy (Nov 2022 - now)
Main focus: Reinforcement Learning for real-world systems with a specific focus on energy systems
Supervisors: Prof. Marcello Restelli and Prof. Francesco Trovò
Scholarship: Financed by Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE S.p.A.)
Relevant coursework: Reinforcement Learning, Online Learning and Monitoring, Multi-Agent Learning: from Theory to Practice, Stochastic Dynamic Programming, Advanced Topics in Deep Learning: the Rise of Transformers
[Thesis - To Appear] [Slides - To Appear]

M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering - Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy (Mar 2019 - Dec 2021)
Main focus: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Thesis: Optimal Real-time Control of Water Distribution Systems undergoing Cyber-Attacks: A Reinforcement Learning Approach
Supervisors: Prof. Marcello Restelli and Prof. Stefano Galelli (Singapore University of Technology and Design)
Relevant coursework: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Game Theory, Recommender Systems, Foundations of Operational Research, Software Engineering II, Principles of Programming Languages.

B.Sc. in Engineering of Computing Systems - Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy (Sep 2015 - Mar 2019)
Relevant coursework: Software Engineering, Theoretical Computer Science, Communication Networks and Internet, Computer Architecture and Operating Systems, Linear Algebra and Geometry, Logics and Algebra, Statistics and Probability, Physics.

High School Scientific Diploma - Liceo Giovanni Cotta, Legnago, Verona, Italy (Sep 2010 - Jul 2015)
Main Focus: Scientific subjects with a focus on mathematics and physics.

Work Experience

Ph.D. Researcher - Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE S.p.A.), Milan, Italy (Nov 2022 - Nov 2025)
Goal: Development of Digital Twins for battery energy storage systems and integration with Machine Learning techniques for real-time monitoring and optimal energy management in micro-grids and renewable energy communities.

Junior Performance Consultant - Moviri S.p.A., Milan, Italy (Oct 2021 - Oct 2022)
Goal: As member of the Monitoring and Observability team, I was responsible for the Dynatrace platform management and customization for enterprise clients.

Research Activities

Teaching Activities

Adjunct Lecturer Informatica B - Prof. Francesco Trovò
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano (Sep 2024 - Feb 2025)

Adjunct Lecturer Informatica B - Prof. Francesco Trovò
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano (Sep 2023 - Feb 2024)

Serving as Reviewer

Contacts

Email
davide DOT salaorni AT polimi DOT it
Personal Email
davidesalaorni AT gmail DOT com

Office

Office 21, First Floor of Building 21
Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria
Politecnico di Milano
Via Ponzio 34/5, Milan, 20133, Italy