Konstantinos Ampountolas received the Diploma in Production Engineering and Management (1999), the M.Sc. degree in Operations Research (2002), and the Ph.D. degree in Engineering (2009), all from the Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece. Since 2019, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Thessaly (UTH), Volos, Greece. Before to joining UTH, he was initially a Lecturer and then a Senior Lecturer with the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow (UofG, 2013-2019), United Kingdom, and an Associate Director at UofG’s Urban Big Data Centre (2019). He was research fellow at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, 2012-2013), Switzerland, visiting researcher scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, CA (2011), and post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece (2010). He was also short-term visiting professor at Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Israel (2014), Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden (2016), and the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil (2016; 2019). 

Dr Ampountolas serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Big Data Analytics in Transportation (since 2018), and on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Transportation Research Part C (since 2013), and Transportation Research Procedia (since 2014). He also served as the Editor for Transportation of Data in Brief (2018–2019).

His research interests include automatic control and optimisation theory with emphasis on applications to traffic, transport, and automotive systems, large-scale networks, and further areas. Specific areas of current research include:

• Set invariance methods for the decentralised constrained control of interconnected systems (with Sheila Scialanga and Sorin Olaru)
• Bayesian non-parametric clustering approaches for spatio-temporal datasets generated by sensors and user-generated content (with Ashwini Venkatasubramaniam and Ludger Evers)
• Information-theoretic methods for the semi-optimal selection and placement of traffic sensors (with Ruzanna Jusoh)
• Traffic management/control with Connected/Automated vehicles (with Chao Zhang, Rodrigo Castelan Carlson and Felipe de Souza)
• Assessment of commercially implemented Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) using empirical data (with Theocharis Apostolakis, Michail Makridis, and Anastasios Kouvelas)

ORCID: 0000-0001-6517-8369

Automatic Control and Autonomous Systems Laboratory

Opportunities for PhD and Post-doctoral Research

I am always looking for opportunities to work with PhD students, post-doctoral researchers (e.g. via the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions), as well as visiting scholars. I am seeking talented and highly motivated students wishing to pursue PhD research in the control and optimisation of systems with applications to vehicular networks and other areas. If you would like to work with me, please feel free to contact me.

Interpolating Control Toolbox (ICT): https://ictoolbox.github.io

Teaching:

• Automatic Control (Undergraduate Course)
• Modern Control Theory (Undergraduate Course)
• Robotics (Undergraduate Course)
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Postgraduate Course)

Current PhD students

• Chao Zhang (UofG)
• Theocharis Apostolakis (UTH)

Former PhD students

• Sheila Scialanga, 2020 (first job at Mathworks, now with Microsoft)
• Ashwini Venkatasubramaniam, 2019 (first job at Alan Turing Institute, now with GSK)
• Ruzanna Jusoh, 2019 (with National Defence University of Malaysia)

Former Post-doctoral Researchers

• Long Chen, 2018-2021 (NPIF Fellow)
• Pablo Garcia, 2018 (CONACYT)

• Apostolakis, Th., Ampountolas,  K., "Physics-Inspired Neural Networks for Parameter Learning of Adaptive Cruise Control Systems," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2024. DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2024.3399918 Abstract  
• Venkatasubramaniam, A., Evers, L., Thakuriah, P., Ampountolas, K.. "Functional distributional clustering using spatio-temporal data". Journal of Applied Statistics, 50(4), 909-926, 2023. DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2021.2001443 Abstract  
• Scialanga, S., Olaru, S., Ampountolas, K. "Reduced-complexity interpolating control with periodic invariant sets". International Journal of Control, 96(3), 757-769, 2023. DOI: 10.1080/00207179.2021.2013540 Abstract  
• Ampountolas, K. "The unscented Kalman filter for nonlinear parameter identification of adaptive cruise control systems", IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 8(8), 4094-4104, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/TIV.2023.3272660. Abstract  
• Apostolakis, Th., Makridis, M., Kouvelas, A., Ampountolas, K., "Energy-based assessment and driving behavior of ACC systems and humans inside platoons", IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2023.3285296. Abstract  
• de Souza, F., Carlson, R.C., Muller, E. R., Ampountolas, K. "Multi-commodity traffic signal control and routing with connected vehicles". IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 23(5), 4111–4121, 2022. DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2020.3041436 Abstract  
• Ampountolas, K., Kring, M. "Mitigating bunching with bus-following models and bus-to-bus cooperation". IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 22(5), 2637-2646, 2021. DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2020.2973585. Abstract