ESD
Franco Fummi
Full Professor
Research interests
Electronic design automation · Cyber-physical systems · Embedded systems · Digital twins · Smart manufacturing
Franco Fummi is Full Professor in Computer Architecture at the University of Verona and leads the Electronic Systems Design (ESD) research group. He received his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 1990 and his PhD in Electronic and Communication Engineering in 1994. His early academic career included research at the University of Victoria in Canada and positions at Politecnico di Milano before he joined the University of Verona, becoming Full Professor in 2001.
His research has developed around hardware description languages and electronic design automation, with particular emphasis on modelling, simulation, verification, testing and optimisation of embedded and cyber-physical systems. This line of work spans abstraction and virtual-platform techniques, hardware/software co-design, functional safety, multi-domain simulation and the analysis of systems in which software, electronics, communication and physical dynamics have to be considered together.
More recent work applies those foundations to cyber-physical production systems and Industry 4.0: digital twins for manufacturing, service-oriented production architectures, software validation before deployment on physical plants, production-line monitoring and reconfiguration, and data-driven methods for industrial systems. Across these topics, his research consistently treats modelling as an engineering tool for making complex systems analyzable and testable before changes reach the real plant.
Projects
STRATEGUS
STRATEgic GUide to Smart manufacturing
A Horizon Europe MSCA Global Fellowship developing digital-twin, simulation and scheduling methods for safely integrating new technologies into existing manufacturing plants, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
DeFacto
Design Automation for Smart Factories
A Horizon 2020 MSCA project on rigorous, compositional design automation for smart factories, combining assume-guarantee contracts, formal methods, simulation and optimisation to engineer high-assurance cyber-physical production systems.
Publications
2024
A Data Fusion Service-Oriented Infrastructure for Production Line Monitoring
ICIT
A Multi-Material and Multi-Scenario Dataset for Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing Operations
ETFA
An AI-Enabled Framework for Smart Semiconductor Manufacturing
DATE
Analog Defect Injection and Fault Simulation Techniques: A Systematic Literature Review
IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst.
Design Automation for Cyber-Physical Production Systems: Lessons Learned from the DeFacto Project
DATE
Enabling Service-Oriented Manufacturing Through Architectures, Models, and Protocols
IEEE Access
Integrating Modeling Languages with Ontologies in the Context of Industry 4.0
ICIT
Multidomain Fault Models Covering the Analog Side of a Smart or Cyber-Physical System
IEEE Trans. Computers
RRPDG: A Graph Model to Enable AI-Based Production Reconfiguration and Optimization
IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics
VARADE: a Variational-based AutoRegressive model for Anomaly Detection on the Edge
DAC
2023
FDL
IECON
Split-Et-Impera: A Framework for the Design of Distributed Deep Learning Applications
DDECS
Thermal Digital Twin of a Multi-Domain System for Discovering Mechanical Faulty Behaviors
INDIN
Towards Deep Learning-based Occupancy Detection Via WiFi Sensing in Unconstrained Environments
DATE
Verilog-A Implementation of Generic Defect Templates for Analog Fault Injection
ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI
FDL
2022
A Framework for Modeling and Concurrently Simulating Mechanical and Electrical Faults in Verilog-AMS
FDL
A Hierarchical Modeling Approach to Improve Scheduling of Manufacturing Processes
ISIE
A Software Architecture to Control Service-Oriented Manufacturing Systems
DATE
Functional Level Abstraction and Simulation of Verilog-AMS Piecewise Linear Models
ISQED
Inferring Mechanical Fault Models from the Electrical Domain
ICPS
Integrating Smart Contracts in Manufacturing for Automated Assessment of Production Quality
IECON
Investigation on Realistic Stuck-on/off Defects to Complement IEEE P2427 Draft Standard
ISQED
On the Impact of Transport Times in Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problems
ETFA
SMART-IC: Smart Monitoring and Production Optimization for Zero-waste Semiconductor Manufacturing
LATS
The Challenges of Coupling Digital-Twins with Multiple Classes of Faults
LATS
2021
A Common Manipulation Framework for Transistor-Level Languages
FDL
A Container-based Design Methodology for Robotic Applications on Kubernetes Edge-Cloud architectures
FDL
A Design Methodology of Multi-level Digital Twins
ICIT
Enabling Component Reuse in Model-based System Engineering of Cyber-Physical Production Systems
ETFA
FDL
Multi-Discipline Fault Modeling with Verilog-AMS
ICPS
Predictive Fault Grouping based on Faulty AC Matrices
DDECS
ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst.
Virtual Prototyping a Production Line Using Assume-Guarantee Contracts
IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics
2020
Automatic Generation of Analog/Mixed Signal Virtual Platforms for Smart Systems
IEEE Trans. Computers
Functionality and Fault Modeling of a DC Motor with Verilog-AMS
INDIN
DAC
Network Synthesis for Industry 4.0
DATE
Production Recipe Validation through Formalization and Digital Twin Generation
DATE
The Design of a Digital-Twin for Predictive Maintenance
ETFA
News
Publication
Agentic AI for digital wellness at DATE 2026
Francesco Biondani, Franco Fummi and collaborators presented architectural challenges and perspectives for agentic AI in smart-home digital-wellness systems at DATE 2026.
Publication
Recent ESD research in digital twins and manufacturing systems
Recent ESD work spans human-centred digital twins, early validation of manufacturing software, and machine-dynamics-aware scheduling for cyber-physical production systems.
Publication
ESD Group: Paper Published at IEEE Transactions on Computers 2023
"Multi-Domain Fault Models Covering the Analog Side of a Smart or Cyber-Physical System" derives mechanical fault models from their electrical equivalents to support system-level safety analysis.
Publication
ESD Group: Paper Published at IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
"Analog Defect Injection and Fault Simulation Techniques: A Systematic Literature Review" surveys the state of the art of analog defect injection and fault simulation.