Gagan Narang

Postdoctoral Researcher, Vision Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (VRAI) Lab
Department of Information Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy

prof_pic.jpg

Office Address:

Room No. Q191, Department of Information Engineering (DII)

Via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona (AN), Italy.

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Vision Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (VRAI) Lab of the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Ancona, Italy. I work at the meeting point of artificial intelligence and public policy.

My doctoral research in Information Engineering, completed in 2025 with the European Doctorate certificate, built scalable AI pipelines for analyzing remotely sensed data. A parallel line of work used machine learning to study how technology and policy shape each other, in areas that include smart elderly care, healthcare digitization, and environmental regulation.

As a postdoc, I combine topic modeling, patent analytics, and large language models to trace how policy agendas and innovation co-evolve, and to ask what that means for the governance of digital transformation. My postdoctoral fellowship focuses on AI and generative AI for the EU projects iStream and FOLOU.

Please feel free to reach out if you are interested in collaborations at the intersection of innovation, AI, and public good.


Core Areas of Work and Engagements

Research Directions

  • AI for Public Policy Analysis & Policy Impact Evaluation
  • Innovation-Policy Co-Evolution (patent analytics, topic modeling, LLMs)
  • AI for Ageing Societies & AI Governance
  • Artificial Intelligence in Remote Sensing Applications

Teaching & Mentorship

  • Curriculum design & MOOC delivery
  • Academic Services (Conference Special Sessions Hosting, Peer Reviewer)
  • Participation in Startup & Hackathons

Policy & Advocacy

  • International and National Projects Involvement
  • Vice Chair for UN Groundwater Youth Network
  • Partnership with Think Tanks

Technology Orchestration

  • Smart aquaculture/agricultural systems
  • Electric mobility projects
  • Digital tools for social impact

Motivation

My motivation stems from the desire to make research not just insightful but usable—deployed in the real world and integrated with the rhythms of daily operations. Whether working with policymakers or deploying edge intelligence in critical infrastructure, I seek to anchor advanced technological systems in utility, adaptability, and long-term value.

At the core of this drive is a belief that impactful technology should not only be smart but also inclusive, modular, and responsive to the ecosystem it inhabits.

As a curious and impact-driven Engineer and Researcher, my mission is to bridge the gap between emerging technologies and societal good through actionable research and interdisciplinary development. My work is rooted in the belief that technology transfer should not remain confined to labs or papers — but must translate into scalable systems that solve real problems.

My interests span sustainability, infrastructure, innovation policy, and AI-based forecasting. I am particularly passionate about enabling intelligent systems to support more resilient and inclusive communities — especially in regions facing environmental and developmental challenges.

This website is a living archive of my projects, collaborations, and reflections. It is part of a broader vision to make research more transparent, useful, and inspiring. By sharing my journey in science, innovation, and technology orchestration, I hope to contribute to a growing community of changemakers who believe that progress must be thoughtful, inclusive, and grounded in impact.

I enjoy both building and managing technology.

Personal Thoughts Beyond Engineering

This principle resonates deeply with my approach to both research and innovation. If the ultimate goal is meaningful technology transfer, it cannot arise from massive systems engineered in isolation. Rather, I believe in building simple, robust modules that interoperate—refined through trial, iteration, and context-specific feedback.

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."

Gall's Law

We’ve witnessed this pattern emerge throughout the AI wave—small components like transformers, embeddings, and basic attention mechanisms stitched together to produce systems of stunning capability. The elegance lies not in complexity but in how simply the complexity is composed.

Beyond engineering, I believe that intellectual humility, a willingness to adapt, and the art of thoughtful simplification are foundational to shaping technology that endures and empowers.

Continuous advocacy and grant participation.

Summary of My Research So Far

My research lies at the intersection of core engineering and management engineering. Broadly, I am interested in the design of digital information systems and their strategic use for technological adoption, governance innovation, and societal impact. My work combines system prototyping and quantitative foresight: building data-driven architectures for sensing and decision-making, while also using patent analytics and policy research to understand how these systems diffuse in complex socio-technical environments for business objectives.

Secondary methods for an information engineering based strategic management.
Since my master's studies, I have engaged with the challenges of technological adoption in both organizational and public contexts. I began by applying formal decision-making methodologies such as SWARA to identify adoption barriers and used patent mining to analyze innovation trends that could overcome them. This blend of engineering insight and strategic framing has continually shaped my approach. During my doctoral research, I applied this perspective to the digitalization of the water distribution system in the commune of Ancona, Marche, Italy. The legacy system relied on manual, experience-based scheduling for water extraction and distribution—a process that was time-consuming and increasingly inadequate. To modernize the infrastructure and align it with sustainability goals, I designed an integrated architecture combining Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Amazon Web Services (AWS), a two-step optimization pipeline, and deep learning-based forecasting. This architecture enabled remote monitoring and data-driven scheduling and was tested in a controlled environment by Viva Servizi, the utility company managing distribution.
Unsupervised clustering methods utilizing novel CPC classification based validation.

This hands-on work with information systems exposed me to rapid prototyping tools such as Microsoft Power BI and other low-code platforms. These tools not only accelerated system development but also deepened my interest in their wider socio-technical implications, particularly for business and public sector applications. More recently, I have been exploring how these streams—technological forecasting, policy framing, and system implementation—can converge into a unified strategy perspective.

Use of generative methods for assisting in inspection and the use in system in action © [IEEE ICRA 2025].

I’m Available For Freelance And Networking

Got an idea, a question, or just a spark of curiosity? Let’s turn it into something impactful — drop me a message, and I’ll get back to you shortly. You can also explore my consulting services for more.


Collaborating Across Time Zones

Ancona
--:--
Leuven
--:--
New Delhi
--:--
Shanghai
--:--
Tokyo
--:--

selected publications

  1. CVIU
    narang2026trackaid.jpg
    TrackAid-DT: An egocentric vision dataset and benchmarks for lane detection in visually impaired athlete guidance
    Gagan Narang, Alessandro Galdelli, Oleksandr Kuznetsov, and 2 more authors
    Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 2026
  2. JES
    Institutional affiliations, network dynamics and the influence of European Union framework programs as drivers for Nobel Prizes success
    D. Bregoli, M. Giurato, M. C. Liscio, and 2 more authors
    Journal of Economic Studies, 2026
  3. TFSC
    govindarajan2025blockchain.jpg
    Blockchain technologies adoption in healthcare: Overcoming barriers amid the hype cycle to enhance patient care
    Usharani Hareesh Govindarajan, Gagan Narang, Dhiraj Kumar Singh, and 1 more author
    Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2025
  4. PRL
    galdelli2025fishingvessels.jpg
    Multimodal AI-enhanced ship detection for mapping fishing vessels and informing on suspicious activities
    Alessandro Galdelli, Gagan Narang, Rocco Pietrini, and 3 more authors
    Pattern Recognition Letters, 2025
  5. ICRA
    biancucci2025coigan.jpg
    COIGAN: Controllable Object Inpainting Through Generative Adversarial Network for Defect Synthesis in Data Augmentation
    Massimiliano Biancucci, Alessandro Galdelli, Gagan Narang, and 3 more authors
    In 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025