Alessandro Zocca

Alessandro Zocca is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he has been since 2019. His research sits at the intersection of applied probability, reinforcement learning, and network optimization, with primary applications in power systems resilience against climate-driven uncertainties.

• Education: PhD in Mathematics (2015, Eindhoven University of Technology), Postdoctoral work at Caltech (2017-2019) and CWI Amsterdam (2016-2017)
• Key Research Themes: Stochastic dynamics on networks, climate crisis impact on infrastructure, optimization under uncertainty
• Awards: Applied Probability Trust award (2015), NWO Rubicon grant (2017)

His recent work focuses on reinforcement learning for grid topology control, two-stage stochastic programming for exponential constraint handling, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods for rare-event analysis. He actively supervises five PhD students on topics ranging from weather-driven grid failures to stochastic frequency reserve optimization.

Co-author of the textbook Hands-On Mathematical Optimization with Python (Cambridge University Press, 2025), he also organizes the IFIP Performance 2025 conference in Amsterdam.