Marco Maurizi, director of the “AMED – AI for Advanced Materials & Engineering Design” R&D Lab.
Coming from Berkeley (U.S.), Marco Maurizi, originally from Italy and born in 1993, has been appointed as the director of the “AMED – AI for Advanced Materials & Engineering Design” R&D Unit, marking the launch of the Research & Development Labs of the Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industry (AI4I). The R&D Labs are at the core of AI4I’s mission to bridge cutting-edge research with industrial applications.
Dr. Maurizi is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he leads AI-driven metamaterials research in Prof. Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng’s lab. His work lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computational solid mechanics, and additive manufacturing, with a focus on generative models, graph neural networks, and surrogate solvers to design architected materials with tailored functionalities. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with merit from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His research spans impact protection, fracture-resistant lattices, and programmable piezoelectric materials, and builds on collaborations with leading research centers across Europe and the United States. He serves as a reviewer for journals such as Nature Communications and Nature Computational Science.
The AMED R&D Unit will develop next-generation AI methodologies, grounded in physics and manufacturing constraints, to revolutionize the design of architected materials and engineering systems. Its goal is to reduce discovery and development cycles from months or years to just days or weeks and to enable scalable, automated design pipelines ready for industrial deployment. The outcomes are expected to have a transformative impact on strategic sectors such as aerospace, automotive, biomedical, manufacturing, robotics, defense, and consumer electronics, with potential benefits on a global scale.
With this appointment, AI4I strengthens Turin’s role as an innovation hub and an attractive destination for global talent. In the coming weeks, the Institute will announce the other directors selected in the first international call, completing the network of R&D Labs designed to connect frontier research with industrial applications and to consolidate Italy’s and Europe’s technological leadership. Aligned with this strategy, the second round of international calls for the heads of AI4I’s R&D Labs, launched on July 16, 2025, is currently open.
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