Michele Mascherpa

I am a PhD student in Applied and Computational Mathematics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in the Division of Numerical Analysis, Optimization and Systems Theory, under the supervision of Johan Karlsson and Per Enqvist.

My research interests are in optimal transport, Schrödinger bridge problems, convex optimization, and computational methods for inverse problems. I am particularly interested in estimation and control problems in networked systems, where only partial, sparse, or aggregate observations are available, with applications to critical societal infrastructures, including water distribution systems and electric mobility.

Before joining KTH, I completed my MSc and BSc in Mathematics at the University of Pavia, Italy.

Publications

• M. Mascherpa, A. Ringh, A. Taghvaei, and J. Karlsson. “A convex approach for Markov chain estimation from aggregate data via inverse optimal transport.” Accepted at ECC 2026, 2026. arXiv:2511.16458 

• M. Mascherpa, V. Molnö, C. S. Kallesøe, and J. Karlsson. “A proximal approach to the Schrödinger bridge problem with incomplete information and application to contamination tracking in water networks.” Submitted, 2026. arXiv:2604.06078

• M. Mascherpa, I. Haasler, B. Ahlgren, and J. Karlsson. “Estimating pollution spread in water networks as a Schrödinger bridge problem with partial information.” European Journal of Control, 2023. Link

• M. Mascherpa and J. Karlsson. “Controlling traffic flow for electric fleets via optimal transport.” In Proceedings of the 63rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2024. Link