Luigi La Spada
luigi la spada

Dr Luigi La Spada

Lecturer

 0131 455 2696

  L.LaSpada@napier.ac.uk

  

Biography

Dr. Luigi La Spada received his bachelor’s and master’s degree (summa cum laude) in Electronics Engineering from University of RomaTre in 2008 and 2010, respectively.
2011 - 2014, he was with the Department of Applied Electronics (University of RomaTre, Italy) and the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering (University of Pennsylvania, USA); where he received his PhD in Electronic Engineering, section: Biomedical Electronics, Electromagnetics, and Telecommunications.
2014 - 2017, he was in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London, as PostDoctoral Research Assistant.
2017 - 2018 (October), he was in the School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics at Coventry University as Lecturer in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
From November 2018 he is in the School of Engineering and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University as Lecturer in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

In 2018 the Advances in Engineering (AIE, Canada) committee selected him as a “key scientific contributor to excellence in science and engineering research”. His research received international scientific recognition and high distinction on several media press (i.e. CNN, CBS, Times, Aspen Institute). Moreover, he is the recipient of different awards, among them: 2017 URSI Young Scientist Award (Canada), finalist for 2017 IEEE Young Scientist Award, 2016 ISAP Best Paper Award (Japan) and 2015 EAI recognition for “new technologies in telecommunications and sensing”.

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Research Groups

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Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Advisory Panel Member: Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • Member of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)

 

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54 results

Application of Quantum Key Distribution to Enhance Data Security in Agrotechnical Monitoring Systems Using UAVs

Journal Article
Bakyt, M., La Spada, L., Zeeshan, N., Moldamurat, K., & Atanov, S. (2025)
Application of Quantum Key Distribution to Enhance Data Security in Agrotechnical Monitoring Systems Using UAVs. Applied Sciences, 15(5), Article 2429. https://doi.org/10.3390/app15052429
Ensuring secure data transmission in agrotechnical monitoring systems using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is critical due to increasing cyber threats, particularly with the ...

Review of Data Security Methods using Low-Earth Orbiters for High-Speed Encryption

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Bakyt, M., Spada, L. L., Moldamurat, K., Kadirbek, Z., & Yermekov, F. (2024, December)
Review of Data Security Methods using Low-Earth Orbiters for High-Speed Encryption. Presented at 2024 4th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligent Information Systems (ICUIS), Gobichettipalayam, India
This paper presents an overview of state-of-the-art data security techniques using low-orbit satellites (LOS) such as CubeSats for high-speed encryption. The paper compares va...

Does being a nurse reduce likelihood of current smoking: an analysis of nationally representative data to investigate smoking across the UK nursing workforce

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Roberts, N. J., Roberts, N., Jamieson, M., Sharp, M. A., La Spada, L., Pathan, N., Butler, H., Nuttall, M., Hancock, C., Donovan, H., & Atherton, I. (2025, March)
Does being a nurse reduce likelihood of current smoking: an analysis of nationally representative data to investigate smoking across the UK nursing workforce. Presented at TSANZ 2025, Adelaide

Locomotion System-Independent, Portable Software Platform for Autonomous Rovers Navigation

Journal Article
Clivio, G., Davison, B., & La Spada, L. (2024)
Locomotion System-Independent, Portable Software Platform for Autonomous Rovers Navigation. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 77(6), 185-190. https://doi.org/10.59332/jbis-077-06-0185
Autonomous navigation is a crucial feature of a rover driving on another planet like Mars due to communication latency at interplanetary distances. It significantly improves t...

Targeted dielectric coating of silver nanoparticles with silica to manipulate optical properties for metasurface applications

Journal Article
Lalegani, Z., Ebrahimi, S. S., Hamawandi, B., La Spada, L., Batili, H., & Toprak, M. (2022)
Targeted dielectric coating of silver nanoparticles with silica to manipulate optical properties for metasurface applications. Materials Chemistry and Physics, 287, Article 126250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matchemphys.2022.126250
An epsilon-negative metamaterial (ENM) containing core@shell nanoparticles (NPs) was designed, where silver (Ag) NPs served as core and silica (SiO2) was used as spacer shell....

The Graphene Field Effect Transistor Modeling Based on an Optimized Ambipolar Virtual Source Model for DNA Detection

Journal Article
Akbari, M., Shahbazzadeh, M. J., La Spada, L., & Khajehzadeh, A. (2021)
The Graphene Field Effect Transistor Modeling Based on an Optimized Ambipolar Virtual Source Model for DNA Detection. Applied Sciences, 11(17), Article 8114. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11178114
The graphene-based Field Effect Transistors (GFETs), due to their multi-parameter characteristics, are growing rapidly as an important detection component for the apt detectio...

Deep Learning Techniques and COVID-19 Drug Discovery: Fundamentals, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions

Book Chapter
Jamshidi, M. B., Lalbakhsh, A., Talla, J., Peroutka, Z., Roshani, S., Matousek, V., …Lotfi, S. (2021)
Deep Learning Techniques and COVID-19 Drug Discovery: Fundamentals, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions. In I. Arpaci, M. Al-Emran, M. A. Al-Sharafi, & G. Marques (Eds.), Emerging Technologies During the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic (9-31). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67716-9_2
The world is in a frustrating situation, which is exacerbating due to the time-consuming process of the COVID-19 vaccine design and production. This chapter provides a compreh...

Modeling, design, and synthesis of gram-scale monodispersed silver nanoparticles using microwave-assisted polyol process for metamaterial applications

Journal Article
Lalegani, Z., Ebrahimi, S. S., Hamawandi, B., La Spada, L., & Toprak, M. (2020)
Modeling, design, and synthesis of gram-scale monodispersed silver nanoparticles using microwave-assisted polyol process for metamaterial applications. Optical Materials, 108, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2020.110381
High-yield monodispersed silver (Ag) nanospheres were modeled, designed, and synthesized by microwave-assisted (MW-assisted) polyol method from AgNO3, polyvinyl pyrrolidone (P...

Metamaterials for electromagnetic and thermal waves

Conference Proceeding
Donnelly, E., Durant, A., Lacoste, C., & Spada, L. L. (2020)
Metamaterials for electromagnetic and thermal waves. https://doi.org/10.23919/eucap48036.2020.9135673
In the last decade, electromagnetic metamaterials, thanks to their exotic properties and the possibility to control electromagnetic waves at will, become crucial building bloc...

Metasurface sensors for healthcare applications

Conference Proceeding
Durant, A., Lacoste, C., Donnelly, E., & Spada, L. L. (2020)
Metasurface sensors for healthcare applications. https://doi.org/10.23919/eucap48036.2020.9135976
Electromagnetic sensors have received huge attention in the last few years, due to the rising demand of devices able to improve quality, performance and safety in different in...

Current Post Grad projects