Although our capabilities to store and process data have been increasing exponentially since the 1960-ties, suddenly many organizations realize that survival is not possible without exploiting available data intelligently. Out of the blue, “Big Data” has become a topic in board-level discussions. The abundance of data will change many jobs across all industries. Moreover, also scientific resear...

The phrase “Engineering Leadership” may seem, at a first glance, as the result of a simple juxtaposition of two, otherwise not related, concepts; on the contrary, an analysis of the respective roots and evolutions shows an undeniable “fil rouge” connecting the two with links intersecting ages and cultures. Leadership is charged with the expectation of providing guidance to decision making under...

A collaboration approach is presented for the design negotiation of the architect and the structural engineer. This approach wants to instigate a design process where architectural shape and structure are designed simultaneously, and design decisions are made within the logics, objectives and culture of both disciplines together. Starting from the techniques of multidisciplinary design optimiza...

Directed evolution is being used increasingly in industrial and academic laboratories to modify and improve commercially important enzymes. Laboratory evolution is thought to make its biggest contribution in explorations of non-natural functions, by allowing us to distinguish the properties nurtured by evolution. In this review we report the significant advances achieved with respect to the met...

Humans are the ultimate ecosystem engineers who have profoundly transformed the world’s landscapes in order to enhance their survival. Somewhat paradoxically, however, sometimes the unforeseen effect of this ecosystem engineering is the very collapse of the population it intended to protect. Here we use a spatial version of a standard population dynamics model of ecosystem engineers to study th...

There is rapidly growing interest in learning how to engineer immune cells, such as T lymphocytes, because of the potential of these engineered cells to be used for therapeutic applications such as the recognition and killing of cancer cells. At the same time, our knowhow and capability to logically engineer cellular behavior is growing rapidly with the development of synthetic biology. Here we...

In this work we present a methodological framework to engineer graded BDI agent-based systems. The graded BDI agent model allows to specify an agent?s architecture able to deal with the environment uncertainty and with graded mental attitudes. We work up previous approaches on software engineering process, adapting and extending them, in order to develop agents with a more complex internal arch...

This paper proposes an engineering design view of process modelling that helps address the high complexity and low flexibility of many process models. In this view, processes are understood as artefacts that need to be designed, realised and adapted throughout their life cycle. The paper argues that the issues of complexity and flexibility arise as symptoms of the more fundamental problem of “d...