Welcoming our new Post Doctoral researchers!

Please join us in welcoming our new postdoctoral researchers!

We are excited to welcome Rocco Cassandro and to welcome back Stefano Marchetti, who previously joined us as a visiting PhD student in 2024.

Rocco Cassandro earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Management from Western New England University in 2025, where his doctoral research focused on developing advanced diagnostic methods for proactive maintenance in broadband cable networks. He previously received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Engineering Management from the Polytechnic University of Bari in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

Within the SyRRA Lab, Dr. Cassandro’s research centers on integrated Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) methodologies for the risk and reliability analysis of complex engineering systems. His primary application domains include hydrogen fueling stations and nuclear systems.

Dr. Cassandro brings strong industry experience in PHM and Design for Reliability (DfR). As a PHM research intern at CableLabs, he worked on fault diagnosis and topology inference in hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks. He has also contributed to DfR efforts in New Product Development (NPD) for a major medical equipment manufacturing company. He is actively involved in the IEEE Reliability Society (RS), where he serves as the IEEE RS Young Professional Representative and participates on organizing committees for multiple IEEE RS–sponsored conferences.

Stefano Marchetti earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering physics and his master’s degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano. His Ph.D. research focused on the risk assessment and management of degrading energy systems, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and probabilistic models to support risk-informed decision-making for maintenance planning and system design. His work spans applications in nuclear power plants, chemical facilities, and oil and gas plants through industrial collaborations.

Within the SyRRA Lab, Dr. Marchetti is developing a risk-informed framework to support the safe, reliable, and economically viable integration of emerging technologies at nuclear sites, with an initial application to coupled nuclear power plants and Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzers.

We’re thrilled to have both Rocco and Stefano to our research lab.

Published February 4, 2026