Welcome Alessandro Bertoni, Post-Doctoral research fellow

Alessandro Bertoni

Welcome Alessandro Bertoni, Post-Doctoral research fellow

Dr Alessandro Bertoni is a post-doc research at BTH employed during the autumn of 2014 working with supporting engineering decision making. Alessandro is part of the KKS research profile “Model Driven Development and Decision Support“, and the aerospace research project VITUM.

Alessandro Bertoni
Alessandro Bertoni

Who are you and what is your background?

I was born and I grew up in a little town called Fino del Monte lying at the beginning of the Alps, one hundred kilometers far from Milan in the north of Italy. Before moving to Sweden I have earned a master degree in management engineering at University of Bergamo in 2009. During 2008-2009 I have worked on process reengineering in a research and development department of a multinational company in Belgium, and there I have matured my decision to continue my studies as a Ph.D. student abroad. I have joined the Functional Product Development research group at Luleå University of Technology in May 2010 and earned my licentiate in Funcional Product Development in March 2011 and later my Ph.D. in Product Innovation in December 2013. In 2014 I have been enrolled as project leader at BTH to continue working on my doctoral studies research and now I have become a post-doctoral research fellow here…

What do you do in research?

My research deals with helping manufacturing companies in making the right decisions in the preliminary stages of design, supporting engineers in understanding what are the most valuable concepts to be developed.

I work in the development of method and tools to support designers to understand better what are the needs that a concept would satisfy in respect to all the stakeholders in the supply chain: from the providers of components to the final user of the product.

Since my Ph.D studies I have been working in collaboration with companies in the aerospace industry, developing method and tools for designers of engine components to understand the effects that a design variation at component level could have on the whole engine, to the aircraft and to the final customer. Having these effects clearer since the beginning of a project will allow companies to developed better products, ultimately leading to a competitive advantage on the market.

In the last years I have been involved in a major European FP7 projects in the aerospace domain where I have developed a value model to assess and visualize the value of different design alternatives in preliminary design. My research now is focused on improving and testing such model to be better integrated in the current product development processes.

What is your experience in teaching?

During these years I have had the possibility to contribute as teacher in a number of courses. During my Ph.D. studies I have run some lectures for master students in the course of “Theory and Methodology for Engineering Product Development” focusing on team dynamics in product-service systems conceptual design. I have also contributed to the course in “Product Development Processes” taking care of the part concerning value-driven design processes. I have recently collaborated in the course of “System Engineering” at BTH taking care of the lectures on functional analysis and decomposition and design concept selection and decision-making. In the last study period I have been coordinator and teacher of the course on “Product-Service Systems Design Research” at BTH.

Aristotle once said ”For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them”. Learning by doing is a key feature of my teaching philosophy. Make the students able to experience what they study will enhance their interest and understanding. I believe that teaching is not about trying to push notions into students’ mind without letting them experiencing and reflecting on what they are learning. Students must first “touch with their hands” what are the peculiarities and the valuable contents of a course; only after having done this, they will be able to understand and discern between what is very important and what is less.

What do you hope to bring to the BTH community and partners?

I come to BTH with the willingness to contribute with my experience and skills to the growing research team in the Model Driven Development and Decision Support research profile. I hope to continuously improve the work done so far in the Value Driven Design domain. I am convinced that BTH is a good environment and owns the perfect academic skills to provide a relevant contribution, and be recognised as a leading actor, in the Value Driven Design community. More personally I bring my curiosity and passion in continuously learning from new experiences and situations and my enthusiasm in communicating this knowledge to our students.

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