Stefano Nolfi

Timeline

1. 1985–1987

   Degree and a CNR fellowship

   A research fellowship with Domenico Parisi at the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) in Rome runs from 1985 to 1987. In 1986, he earns a laurea in literature and philosophy from the University of Rome La Sapienza.

2. 1994–2002

   Heading an artificial life division

   He heads the Division of Neural Systems and Artificial Life at CNR's Institute of Psychology in Rome from 1994 to 2002. In 1994, the research group Domenico Parisi founded in 1985, today the Laboratory of Autonomous Robotics and Artificial Life, comes under his coordination.

3. 2000

   The Evolutionary Robotics book

   In 2000, he and Dario Floreano publish Evolutionary Robotics: The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-Organizing Machines with MIT Press. The book reports experiments carried out at CNR's Institute of Psychology in Rome and at the Laboratory of Microcomputing of EPFL in Lausanne. He is one of the founders of evolutionary robotics.

4. 2001–2005

   The SWARM-BOTS project

   From 2001 to 2005, he is principal investigator on SWARM-BOTS (Swarms of Self-Assembling Artifacts), a European Commission project. Its distributed adaptive controllers steer groups of real or simulated robots through tasks that require cooperation and coordination.

5. 2008–2012

   The ITALK language project

   He is principal investigator at the CNR-ISTC node of ITALK (Integration and Transfer of Action and Language Knowledge in Robots), a European Commission project coordinated by the University of Plymouth that runs from 2008 to 2012. In 2010, he edits Evolution of Communication and Language in Embodied Agents, published by Springer Verlag.

6. 2011–2014

   Coordinating the H2Swarm project

   He coordinates H2Swarm (Hierarchical Heterogeneous Swarm), a project funded by the European Science Foundation, from 2011 to 2014.

7. 2021

   An open-access robotics book

   In 2021, he releases the open-access book Behavioral and Cognitive Robotics: An Adaptive Perspective. It describes how to create robots that develop the behavioral and cognitive skills for a task through evolutionary and learning processes, and it introduces neuro-evolution, reinforcement learning and learning by demonstration.

8. As of October 2026

   Research director at CNR-ISTC

   He is a research director at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council and directs its Laboratory of Autonomous Robots and Artificial Life in Rome. His research covers how behavioural and cognitive skills evolve and develop in natural and artificial embodied agents, including robots.