Dr. Alfredo Núñez Vicencio – About me

About me

Alfredo Núñez (IEEE Membership: M’02-SM’14) is currently an Associate Professor in Intelligent Railway Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. Dr. Núñez received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Chile in 2010, was a postdoctoral researcher with the Delft Center for Systems and Control, and has been a visiting scholar at universities in Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Chile, Colombia, China, and the USA.

Dr. Núñez has published over a hundred international journal and international conference papers in the field of intelligent transportation systems, including the fields of intelligent railway infrastructure, railway engineering, computational intelligence (neural networks, fuzzy logic, and evolutionary computation), structural health monitoring, maintenance of engineering structures, control of railway systems, asset management of transportation infrastructures, big data, and optimization.

The research of Dr. Núñez has been funded by the Dutch Research Council, the Dutch Railway Infrastructure Manager (ProRail), and various other sources, including European projects such as NeTIRail-INFRA, In2Track3, and IAM4RAIL for which Dr. Núñez was task leader in the development of wayside, onboard and crowd-based railway measurements technologies, railway track simulations, monitoring and maintenance, and railway infrastructure sensing and analytics technologies.

Dr. Núñez belongs to the Editorial Board of the journals IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems - IEEE (Associate Editor), Applied Soft Computing - Elsevier (Editorial Board Member) and Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure - Oxford Academic (Editorial Board Member), has been guest editor of two special issues in the journal Wear - Elsevier (CM2018 and CM2022), and guest editor for other journals.

You can see here some photos mostly about my research and work. I am also member of the ED&I team at the faculty.

Work record

My updated CV and publications can be found here: Curriculum Vitae (.pdf), Publication List (.pdf).

Aug. 2021-Present:

Full-time Associate Professor (UHD), TU Delft, Section of Railway Engineering, Department of Engineering Structures, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. Topic: Intelligent railway infrastructure. Keywords: Railway engineering, computational intelligence (neural networks, fuzzy logic, and evolutionary computation), structural health monitoring, maintenance of engineering structures, control of railway systems, asset management of transportation infrastructures, big data, and optimization.

May 2022-present:

Member of the Editorial Board of the journal Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure, Oxford.

Nov. 2018-Jul. 2021:

Full-time Assistant Professor (UD), TU Delft, Section of Railway Engineering, Department of Engineering Structures, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. Topic: Data-based maintenance for railway infrastructure. Keywords: Decision support in railway systems, big data-based and AI-based maintenance decision making for railway infrastructure.

Apr. 2019-present:

Member of the Editorial Board of the journal IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society.

Nov. 2018-Jan. 2019:

Visiting research scholar, University of California Berkeley, USA, Institute of Transportation Studies. Host: Prof. Alexandre Bayen. Sponsoring/advising faculty member: Prof. Zuo-Jun Max Shen.

Jul. 2018-present:

Member of the Editorial Board of the journal Applied Soft Computing, Elsevier.

Feb. 2016-Oct. 2018:

Full-time Assistant Professor (permanent, researcher/docent), TU Delft, Section of Railway Engineering, Department of Engineering Structures, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. Topic: Structural condition monitoring and maintenance of railways.

Feb. 2013-Jan. 2016:

Full-time researcher, Section of Railway Engineering, CiTG Faculty, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. Topic: Health condition monitoring and maintenance of railway infrastructures. Supervisor: Prof. Zili Li.

Feb. 2010-Jan. 2013:

Full-time post-doctoral researcher, Delft Center for Systems and Control, 3mE Faculty, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. Topic: Hierarchical and distributed model based predictive control. Supervisor: Prof. Bart De Schutter.

Dec. 11, 2009:

Obtained PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, working on Dynamic Transportation Systems, Electrical Engineering Department, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Thesis: Design of hybrid predictive control strategies for optimization of operational processes in dynamic transport systems. Thesis advisor: Dr. Doris Sáez H. Thesis co-advisor: Dr. Cristian E. Cortés C.

Dec. 2008-Jun. 2009:

Visiting PhD researcher, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Laboratory of Modelling, Simulation and Control. Supervisor: Prof. Igor Škrjanc.

Aug. 2007-Dec. 2008:

Part-time instructor at Faculty of Engineering of Universidad Mayor, in Santiago, Chile. In Aug. 2008, I received the award “Outstanding Instructor - Electrical Engineering”, for my performance as teacher and my work with the students.

Mar. 2006-Dec. 2009:

Doctorate researcher and lecturer, Laboratorio de Control Avanzado II, Electrical Engineering Department, Universidad de Chile.

May. 25, 2007:

Obtained Master degree in Engineering and Science, in Electrical Engineering (Systems and Control), and title of Civil Electrical Engineer, Universidad de Chile. Thesis: “Estrategias de Control Predictivo Híbrido y su aplicación al ruteo dinámico de vehículos (Spanish)”. Thesis advisor: Dr. Doris Sáez H. Thesis co-advisor: Dr. Cristian E. Cortés C.

Aug. 15, 2005:

Obtained Bachelor degree in Engineering Science, in Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Chile.

Mar. 2000-Dec. 2005:

BSc. and MSc. student in electrical engineering at Universidad de Chile. Specialization: Modeling and Control.

Research visits

Mar., 2023:

University of Maryland, USA, A. James Clark School of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Host: Prof. Nii Attoh-Okine..

Feb., 2023:

University of Seville, Spain, Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automatica. Host: Prof. José Ramón Dominguez Frejo..

Nov. 1, 2018-Jan. 23, 2019:

University of California Berkeley, USA, ITSBerkeley, Institute of Transportation Studies. Host: Prof. Alexandre Bayen. Sponsoring/advising faculty member: Prof. Zuo-Jun Max Shen. Visit in the framework of H2020 RISEN project.

Jul. 18, 2017:

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Invited by Prof. Ni Yiqing.

Jul. 13 – Jul. 14, 2017:

Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China, School of Electrical Engineering. Invited by Prof. Zhigang Liu.

Mar. 9 – Mar. 13, 2015; Aug. 5 – Aug. 16, 2013:

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia, School of Mechatronics, Faculty of Engineering. Invited by Prof. Jairo Espinosa.

May 27 – Jun. 7, 2013:

Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile, Electrical Engineering Department. Invited by Dr. Doris Sáez.

Nov. 27 - Dec. 7, 2012:

Technical University of Catalunya, Spain, Automatic Control Department (ESAII). Invited by Dr. Carlos Ocampo-Martinez.

Apr. 26 - May. 27, 2011:

University of Pavia, Italy, Identification and Control of Dynamic Systems Laboratory. Invited by Prof. Antonella Ferrara.

May. 6-7, 18-21, 2010; Dec. 15, 2008 - Jun. 10, 2009:

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Laboratory of Modelling, Simulation and Control. Invited by Prof. Igor Škrjanc.

Jul. 5-11, 2006:

University of California at Irvine, California, USA, Institute of Transportation Studies. Invited by Dr. Jay Jayakrishnan.