Publications

Direct solution of multi-objective optimal control problems applied to spaceplane mission design

Ricciardi Lorenzo A, Maddock Christie Alisa, Vasile Massimiliano

Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics Vol 42, pp. 30-46 (2019)

https://doi.org/10.2514/1.G003839

Implementing life cycle sustainability assessment for improved space mission design

Wilson Andrew R, Vasile Massimiliano, Maddock Christie, Baker Keith

Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management Vol 19, pp. 1002-1022 (2023)

https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4722

Multi-stage multi-fidelity information correction for artificial neural network based meta-modelling

Parsonage Ben, Maddock Christie

2020 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, pp. 950-957 (2021)

https://doi.org/10.1109/SSCI47803.2020.9308255

A Bayesian Learning Approach for Drone Coverage Network : A Case Study on Cardiac Arrest in Scotland

Basu Tathagata, Patelli Edoardo, Filippi Gianluca, Parsonage Ben, Vasile Massimiliano, Fossati Marco, Loyd Adam, Marshall Shaun, Gowens Paul, Maddock Christie

(2026)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.23134

Examining European student geographic mobility in the space field : ASTRAIOS project insight

Zabihian Ehsan, Maddock Christie, Kerkezian Silva, Budd Thiemann Heidi, Al Asmar Yolla, Belgiu Mariana, Lanfredi Alberti Cecilia

11th European Conference for AeroSpace Sciences (2025)

https://doi.org/10.13009/EUCASS2025-765

An intelligent guidance and control algorithm for CubeSat-based autonomous active debris removal mission

Shafiei-shahraki Saeid, Zabihian Ehsan, Maddock Christie, Vasile Massimiliano

76th International Astronautical Congress 76th International Astronautical Congress (2025)

More publications

Teaching

My teaching reflects this emphasis on computational engineering and transferable problem-solving skills.

I teach numerical methods, programming and engineering analysis, with a focus on understanding how computational methods work, what assumptions they contain and how engineers should judge whether a result is credible.

As AI increasingly automates elements of coding and analysis, I believe these foundations become more important. Engineers need to formulate problems correctly, interrogate computational outputs and recognise when an apparently convincing answer is mathematically or physically wrong.

I supervise undergraduate, MSc and doctoral research across launch systems, propulsion, optimisation, control, UAVs, space sustainability and computational aerospace engineering.

I am also interested in the wider skills needed by the space sector, including doctoral training, industry-linked education, continuing professional development and new approaches to upskilling and reskilling.

Research Interests

My overarching research goals are in multidisciplinary design optimisation and optimal control for atmospheric, transatmospheric and space flight systems. The central question behind much of my work is how to make better system-level decisions earlier in the design process, while retaining enough physical fidelity to understand the consequences of those decisions across the full mission and life cycle. This requires combining mathematical modelling, numerical simulation, optimisation, uncertainty quantification and, increasingly, data-driven and artificial-intelligence methods within integrated computational frameworks.

A key part of this research is expanding what we mean by a “system”. Rather than modelling only a vehicle during its nominal operating phase, I am interested in methods that can represent the full chain from concept and requirements through design, manufacture, testing, operations and maintenance to off-nominal behaviour, disposal, demise and, where appropriate, recycling. The same philosophy applies to the operational environment: a launch vehicle, aircraft, spacecraft or autonomous system cannot be optimised in isolation from the infrastructure, regulatory constraints, environmental effects, economic drivers and other systems with which it interacts. This broader perspective is increasingly important as aerospace engineering moves towards reusable vehicles, higher levels of autonomy, congested orbital environments and more explicit requirements for environmental and economic sustainability.

Methodologically, my work has focused on multidisciplinary and multi-objective optimisation, trajectory optimisation and optimal control, surrogate and reduced-order modelling, multi-fidelity methods, uncertainty treatment and computational approaches for large and expensive design spaces. I am interested in the balance between generality and specialisation: developing low-technology-readiness-level methods in mathematics, computational science and engineering that are sufficiently general to be transferable across classes of aerospace problems, and then adapting, validating and improving them for specific applications. The objective is not optimisation for its own sake, but the development of robust engineering tools that help identify design drivers, quantify trade-offs, expose sensitivities and support defensible decisions.

My research therefore deliberately spans the spectrum from fundamental methods to industrially relevant applications. At lower TRLs, this includes the development of new optimisation algorithms, multi-fidelity model-management approaches, uncertainty-aware design methods and optimal-control techniques. At mid TRLs, I work with industrial collaborators to apply these methods to realistic design cases using higher-fidelity simulation, experimental data and operational constraints. These collaborations provide an important route for verification and validation, while giving industry access to emerging computational techniques before they are mature enough to appear in commercial engineering software. The longer-term aim is to create research methods that can move into design, testing and operational workflows rather than remaining as isolated academic demonstrations.

The first major application area for this work is future access to space. I have worked for many years on the integrated design and performance optimisation of launch systems, including reusable and semi-reusable launch vehicles, air-launched systems, spaceplanes and multi-stage rocket systems. These problems are inherently multidisciplinary: propulsion sizing changes vehicle mass; vehicle mass changes the trajectory; trajectory changes aerodynamic and thermal loading; staging decisions influence both performance and recovery; and all of these choices affect payload capability, cost, safety and operability. My work uses system-level modelling and optimisation to capture these couplings and to examine not only nominal ascent performance but also recovery, abort, range-safety and other operational scenarios.

This research is increasingly extending from vehicle-level design into rocket propulsion and the interaction between propulsion, vehicle and operations. Current interests include multi-physics and multi-fidelity modelling of liquid, solid and hybrid rocket systems; digital twins for rocket engines and propulsion test facilities; uncertainty in performance prediction and ground-test data; automated testing and diagnostics; and the propagation of component- and engine-level uncertainty into stage and mission performance. Through the UK Rocketry Research, Training and Teaching programme and collaborations with industry, I am particularly interested in building stronger links between computational modelling, physical testing and flight-system design. This provides a route to train researchers who understand the complete chain from fundamental propulsion behaviour and experimental evidence to vehicle design, guidance and mission performance.

The second application area is autonomous atmospheric flight, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles. UAVs provide an excellent research platform because they combine vehicle design, guidance and control, sensing, communications, operations and network-level decision making within systems that can be tested comparatively rapidly. My interests include the integrated design and control of autonomous aerial systems, robust mission and trajectory planning, and the use of optimisation and AI to design networks of vehicles for real operational needs. Recent work, for example, has considered drone network design for time-critical emergency response. More broadly, I see UAVs as an important bridge between theoretical aerospace methods and deployable autonomous systems, allowing new approaches to optimisation, uncertainty and intelligent decision making to be developed and tested in operationally meaningful environments.

The third application area is long-term space exploration and sustained human activity beyond Earth. My background in this area began with my doctoral research at the University of Glasgow, where I studied the dynamics, navigation and control of spacecraft formations operating close to asteroids for asteroid deflection and manipulation. Since then, my interests have broadened to include interplanetary transportation architectures, high-energy and advanced-propulsion mission concepts, optimisation of complex space systems, and the design of systems that can operate safely and sustainably over long timescales. I am particularly interested in questions where mission design, vehicle architecture, uncertainty and operational strategy need to be considered together rather than sequentially.

Sustainability is now a connecting theme across all three application areas. Aerospace systems create impacts throughout their life cycle, and conventional performance metrics such as payload, range, mass or cost are no longer sufficient on their own. My research has contributed to the development and application of life-cycle sustainability assessment for space missions and to understanding how environmental and socio-economic considerations can be incorporated into early mission and system design. This includes the challenge of uncertainty: environmental inventories and future operating scenarios can contain substantial epistemic and aleatory uncertainty, so an apparently precise sustainability optimum may be misleading. I am interested in methods that make these uncertainties visible and allow designers to understand the robustness of the trade-offs they are making.

Before my academic career, I worked in satellite communications and spectrum engineering in Canada. After completing my undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University, with a concentration in electronics and systems, I worked in the Canadian Spectrum Engineering Division on the analysis and design of future satellite communication systems and on international spectrum regulation. I participated in working groups within the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector, including work on the performance, availability, air interfaces and earth-station equipment of satellite systems. That experience gave me an early appreciation of the fact that aerospace systems are shaped not only by physics and engineering design but also by standards, regulation, interoperability and international coordination.

I subsequently completed my doctorate at the University of Glasgow in spacecraft dynamics, navigation and control before moving into research on future air-space transportation systems at Strathclyde. This combination of communications engineering, spacecraft dynamics, control, optimisation and system design continues to influence how I approach research: I am most interested in problems that sit between established disciplines and where progress requires several models, scales or viewpoints to be connected.

My work has involved collaborations with aerospace companies, start-ups, space agencies and universities in the UK, Europe and internationally. I have undertaken consultancy and collaborative research on launch-system performance, trajectory optimisation, robust design, propulsion and aerospace-system analysis, and I value the two-way exchange that comes from working with organisations attempting to deploy new technology in practice. Industrial data, test campaigns and operational constraints expose weaknesses in academic assumptions; academic research, in turn, can offer new methods for exploring design spaces and understanding uncertainty that are difficult to develop within commercial timescales.

Across these activities, the common thread in my research is the design of complex aerospace systems under competing objectives, incomplete information and changing operational requirements. Whether the system is a reusable launcher, a rocket engine, a UAV network, a spacecraft operating in a congested orbital environment or an architecture for future exploration, the challenge is to understand the interactions between subsystems and decisions well enough to identify solutions that are not only high-performing but also robust, safe, sustainable and operable.

I am always interested in collaborations that bring together computational methods, aerospace applications and real engineering data, particularly in multidisciplinary design optimisation, optimal control, future launch systems and rocket propulsion, autonomous flight, AI-enabled space safety and sustainability, and long-term space exploration. I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD researchers, academic collaborators and industrial partners who are interested in developing and applying new system-level methods to the next generation of air and space transportation.

Professional Activities

Variable-size design space optimisation for aerospace applications

Examiner

29/6/2021

Women in Aerospace Europe (WiA-E) Working Group on Skills Gap in Aerospace (External organisation)

Member

6/2021

Stardust-R Global Virtual Workshop II: Space Traffic Management and Resilient Space Environment

Organiser

13/9/2021

Viva of Callum Wilson, Can Spacecraft Think? Intelligent Learning Control Onboard Spacecraft

Examiner

8/12/2025

Viva of Carlos Ortega Absil, Computational Methods for the Analysis and Multi-Criteria Optimisation of Space Systems Affected by Epistemic Uncertainty

Examiner

31/10/2024

2nd International Workshop on AI for Space Sustainability

Member of programme committee

30/10/2024

More professional activities

Projects

Assessment of a very high power cargo transportation system to Mars

Maddock, Christie (Principal Investigator) Minisci, Edmondo (Co-investigator) Vasile, Massimiliano (Co-investigator) Ricciardi, Lorenzo Angelo (Research Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2020 - 15-Jan-2020

Uncertainty Treatment and OPtimisation in Aerospace Engineering (UTOPIAE) (H2020 MCSA ETN)

Vasile, Massimiliano (Principal Investigator) Akartunali, Kerem (Co-investigator) Maddock, Christie (Co-investigator) Minisci, Edmondo (Co-investigator) Revie, Matthew (Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2017 - 31-Jan-2020

Space Launch Impact on Climate and Environment (SLICE) MSCA DN

Maddock, Christie (Principal Investigator) Fossati, Marco (Co-investigator) Vasile, Massimiliano (Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2026 - 31-Jan-2029

UK Rocketry, Research, Training, and Teaching Hub (STFC CDT) Cohort 2

Maddock, Christie (Principal Investigator)

01-Jan-2025 - 30-Jan-2029

UK Rocketry, Research, Training, and Teaching Hub (STFC CDT)

Maddock, Christie (Principal Investigator)

01-Jan-2024 - 30-Jan-2028

AI for Space Operations, Safety and Sustainability (A14S3)

Vasile, Massimiliano (Principal Investigator) Clemente, Carmine (Co-investigator) Feng, Jinglang (Co-investigator) Maddock, Christie (Co-investigator) Marshall, Stephen (Co-investigator) Murray, Paul (Co-investigator) Riccardi, Annalisa (Co-investigator)

01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2025

More projects