Projects

This page collects selected research projects, publications, talks, and academic reports produced during my academic career.

Publications

Enhancing Parameter Control Policies with State Information
Proceedings of the Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA 2025), Leiden, Netherlands, 2025.
arXiv:2507.08368.

This work studies dynamic parameter control strategies for randomized optimization algorithms, showing how state information can be exploited to improve theoretical and empirical performance guarantees, in collaboration with Denis Antipov and Prof. Carola Doerr.

→ Paper (PDF)

Talks

Dynamic Parameter Policies for LeadingOnes on Complex State Spaces
ROADEF – Conference of the French Operations Research Society, Champs-sur-Marne, France, 2025.

This talk presented the main results of my master’s thesis on dynamic parameter policies for randomized local search, developed during a research stay at LIP6–Sorbonne Université/CNRS under the supervision of Prof. Carola Doerr.

→ Slides

Variational Inference via Wasserstein Gradient Flows
Public seminar (PhD interview talk), Seminar series Modern Methods in Applied Stochastics and Nonparametric Statistics,
WIAS Berlin (online), 2025.

In this public seminar, I presented the work by Lambert et al., Variational Inference via Wasserstein Gradient Flows, as part of the PhD interview process at WIAS Berlin.

→ Slides

Theses

Parameter Control for LeadingOnes on Enhanced State Spaces
Master’s Thesis

The thesis investigates optimal parameter control for randomized optimization algorithms using enriched state-space models, under the supervision of Prof. Carola Doerr (Sorbonne Université/CNRS) and Prof. Stefano Gualandi (University of Pavia).

→ Thesis (PDF) · Slides

Ewens’ Sampling Formula and Applications to the Study of Biodiversity (Italian)
Bachelor’s Thesis

This thesis studies Ewens’ sampling formula and its applications to population genetics models, under the supervision of Prof. Emanuele Dolera.

→ Thesis (PDF) · Slides

Reports and Research Projects

Research in Statistical Optimal Transport
Ongoing research collaboration with Prof. Carlo Ciliberto (UCL) on entropic approximations of the Knothe–Rosenblatt rearrangement and Bayesian inference.
(Status: work in progress)

Submodularity for Distributionally Robust Optimization

This report surveys the role of submodular functions in distributionally robust optimization, under the supervision of Prof. Angelos Georghiou and Prof. Rosario Paradiso.

→ Report (PDF)

Statistical Study of Stochastic Optimization Problems

This project investigated the statistical consistency properties of stochastic optimization problems, conducted at the Statistical Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Qingyuan Zhao and Tobias Freidling.

→ Report (PDF)

Internship Report at Sphaera

This project consisted in the developement of an algorithm for sports analytics combining neural networks and computer vision techniques, conducted at the startup Sphaera under the supervision of Dr. Mirko Messori and Dr. Giuseppe Marseglia.

→ Report (PDF)

Selected Exam Projects

Some examinations during my studies included the preparation of a presentation or a written report. Selected materials are listed below.

Additional laboratory work and programming assignments developed during BSc and MSc courses are available on my GitHub profile:
→ github.com/gianlucacovini