Paolo Mercorelli grew up in Castiglione d'Orcia (Italy), and from 1977 to 1982 attended the high school Antonio da San Gallo in Montepulciano (Italy). He then studied a diploma course in electronics at the University of Florence. He graduated in 1992 and received the degree of a graduate engineer.

He received the M.S. degree (Laurea) in Electronic Engineering from the University of Florence, Florence, Italy. Thereafter, from 1992 to 1993, he was an independent development engineer in the field of electrical and hydraulic systems. In 1994 he joined the "X Cycle" doctoral program in Systems Engineering at the University of Bologna. He received a Ph.D. degree in Systems Engineering from his Alma Mater, Studiorum University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, in 1998.

Research industrial activity from 1997 to 2005

In 1997, Paolo Mercorelli was a visiting researcher for one year in the Department of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He received an award from Marie Curie Actions research fellowship program sponsored by The European Commission in year 1998. The Marie Curie Actions research fellowship program is a set of mobility research grant schemes funding pre- and post-doctoral researchers in Europe as well as experienced researchers from all over the world. Thanks to this scholarship, from 1998 to 2001, Paolo Mercorelli was a postdoctoral researcher with ABB (Asea Brown Boveri) Corporate Research, Heidelberg, Germany. During the Heidelber period he was the initiator of software structures based on wavelet packets for fault detection and data reconciliation and he developed industrial trading software. He was the inventor cited in three patents in which the applicant was ABB Zuerich. Moreover, these wavelet packet structures were implemented and integrated in the Inferential Modelling Platform of the Advanced Control and Simulation Solution Responsible Unit within the ABB industry division, which indicates the long term significance of his research. From 2002 to 2005, he was a senior researcher with the Institute of Automation and Informatics, Wernigerode, Germany, where he was the leader of the control group.

Academic activity from 2005 until the present

From 2005 to 2011, Paolo Mercorelli was an Associate Professor of Process Informatics with Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, Wolfsburg, Germany. In Wolfsburg, he was involved in various projects with the Volkswagen AG Research Center. In 2009 he received the call from the German University in Cairo (Egypt) to accept a Full Professorship (Chair) in Mechatronics, which he declined. In 2010 he was in the short list of the candidates for an Associate Professorship in Electrical and Hybrid Drive Systems, VL-2010-0004 of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology of Stocholm. In 2011 he was a visiting professor at Villanova University, Philadelphia, USA, where he was invited to become Professor of Dynamic Systems, which he declined. Since 2012 he has had the position of Distinguished Full Professor (W3-Professor) and Head of the Chair of Control and Drive Systems at the Institute of Product and Process Innovation, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Lueneburg, Germany. Since 2018 he has obtained an International Distinguished Visiting Professor Fellowship at the Institute of Automatic Control of Lodz University of Technology (Poland) at the Master in “Automatic Control and Robotics“. He has been responsible for the course of "Modelling of Industrial Control Systems" and for the course of "Modelling Methods of Analog Circuits" at the Master Course in Automatic Control and Robotics.  Since 2018 he has obtained a visiting scientist fellowship with the Institute of Information Theory and Automation (UTIA) at the Czech Academy of Science of Prague (Czech Republic). Since 2019 he has been lecturer and Visiting Professor at the PhD Schools of the University of Miskolc and Craiova. Since Winter Semester 2020 he has been a lecturer at Universtiy of Nevada at Las Vegas (USA) and at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville (USA) within  USAC Consortium Teaching Exchange Virtual Program through Zoom lectures. In Winter Semester 2020 he has been a lecturer at National Public Research Wright Universtiy (Ohio State University) within the same program.

Editor of 1 book, author and co-author of 305 publications in peer-reviewed international journals, conferences and book chapters, 8 plenary lectures, 3 patents. (January 2021)

Scholarship awards

He received an award from Marie Curie Actions research fellowship program sponsored by The European Commission in year 1998. The Marie-Curie Fellowships are Europe’s most competitive and prestigious awards, and are aimed at fostering interdisciplinary research and international collaboration.

Main research activity recognitions

World’s Top 2% Scientists 2020 in accordance with Mendeley Search Data

Award for the Best Conference Paper at the 21st International Carpathian Control Conference (ICCC) which took place from 27th-29th October in Tuke (Slovak Republic). The paper is entitled „Controlling a Bank Model Economy by Using an Adaptive Model Predictive Control with Help of an Extended Kalman Filter„.

Award for the Best Conference Paper at the 18th International Carpathian Control Conference (ICCC), which took place from 28 to 31 May 2017 in Sinaia (Romania). The prize was awarded during the closing ceremony. The paper was entitled: “Combining flatness-based feedforward action with a fractional PI regulator to control the intake valve engine”.

During Dies Academicus on July 5, 2017, at Leuphana University Lüneburg, he was awarded for his excellent research and his consistently outstanding publication performance in 2016 by the Leuphana Research Prize .

He received the Best Presentation Award at the 2014 IECON Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, Dallas (2014). His paper was entitled:  “An MPC for an aggregate actuator with a self-tuning feedforward control”.

He received the Best Paper Award in Control at the IEEE International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technology (CoDIT’14) which took place in Metz, France. His paper was entitled: “Contemporary sinusoidal disturbance detection and nano parameters identification using data scaling based on Recursive Least Squares algorithms”.

He received the Best Presentation Award at the 2013 IECON Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, Vienna (2013). His paper was entitled: “A Cascade Regulator Using Lyapunov’s PID-PID Controllers for an Aggregate Actuator in Automotive Applications”.

On the 2nd of February 2003 he was awarded for acting as a supervisor of the thesis of Kai Lehmann entitled “Modellierung elektromagnetischer Linearaktuatoren als Ventiltrieb”, which was the second best thesis in “VDI-Region Magdeburg”. The selection was between all the theses from the year 2002 written by engineers in “VDI-Region Magdeburg”.