Short CV

Education

(2005 – 2008)  IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies

  • PhD student with full grant  at the PhD Programme in Computer Science
  • December 2008 – Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering
  • Thesis awarded with the 2009 E.R. Caianiello Award for the best Ph.D. Thesis in Neural Networks and related fields

(2007 – 2008)   Liverpool John Moores University

  • Visiting researcher at the Neural Computation Research Group under the supervision of Prof. Paulo J. G. Lisboa.

(1998 – 2003)   Computer Science Department –  University of Pisa

  • May 2003 –  B.Sc. in Computer Science, Cum Laude
  • December 2003 – M.Sc. in Computer Science, Cum Laude

(2001 – 2002)   University of Uppsala

  • Visiting student at the Computer Science Department in the framework of the EU Erasmus project

Work Experience

(November 2023 – now) Full Professor at the Computer Science Department – University of Pisa

(November 2023 – now) Director of AI Research – Aptus.AI

(July 2020 – October 2023) Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department – University of Pisa

  • Founder and head of the Pervasive Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (PAILab)
  • Italian national habilitation as Full Professor in Computer Science (01/B1) since 23/11/2020
  • Italian national habilitation as Full Professor in Computer Engineering (09/H1) since 13/11/2020
  • (January 2020-October 2023) Coordinator of the EU-H2020-ICT TEACHING project (A computing Toolkit for building Efficient Autonomous appliCations leveraging Humanistic INtelliGence).

(May 2014 – June 2020) Assistant professor at the Computer Science Department – University of Pisa

  • (July 2017 – June 2020) Senior Assistant professor
  • (May 2014 – June 2017) Junior Assistant professor
  • (March 2016-September 2019) Principal Investigator of the MIUR-SIR project LISTIT:  Learning non-Isomorph Structured Transductions for Image and Text fragments
  • (May 2014-October 2016) Work on the FP7 EU project (STREP) DOREMI: Decrease of cOgnitive decline malnutRition and sedEntariness by elderly empowerment in lifestyle Management and social Inclusion

(June 2011 – April 2014)  PostDoc Research Fellow of the CI&ML group at the Computer Science Department – University of Pisa

  • Work on the FP7 EU project (STREP) RUBICON: Robotic UBIquitous COgnitive Network

(2009 – May 2011)  PostDoc Research Fellow of the CI&ML group at the Computer Science Department – University of Pisa

(Oct. 2008 – Dec. 2008)  Research Assistant at Liverpool John Moores University – Unilever Research, UK

  • Structure learning in Bayesian graphical models: joint work with Paulo J.G. Lisboa (Liverpool John Moores University) and Joe Whittaker (Lancaster University)

(2004 – 2006) Robotech Srl – Italy

  •  Collaboration to prototyping and development of the I-Droid01 robotic platform

(2004 – 2005)  Research Assistant at the Arts Lab – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Pisa

  • Work on the European project (IST-FET) Alladin: Natural Language Based Decision Support in Neuro-Rehabilitation

Scientific Activity

A complete list of publications is available here

A summary of my supervision activity (post-doc, phd and undergraduate) is available here

Editorial Activity

  • Associate Editor of IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine (since 2024)
  • Senior Editor of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (since 2022) (previously Associate Editor since 2017)
  • Academic Editor of PLOS ONE (2018-2022)
  • Guest Associate Editor for Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2019-2020)

Scientific and Academic Organizations

Executive Committee Member and President of the Alumni and Students Association of IMT Lucca (2019-ongoing).

Conference Organization

Organizing committee of conference and graduate/summer schools

  • ACM AI-ML Systems 2024 – Technical Program Committee Chair
  • IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2024) – Program Vice-Chair
  • IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2022) – Publicity/Public Relations Chair
  • IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing (DASC 2021) – Member of International Advisory Committee
  • “Advanced Course on Data Science & Machine Learning” (ACDL 2021, ACDL 2020, ACDL 2019, ACDL 2018)
  • INNS Big Data and Deep Learning Conference (INNSBDDL 2019) – Awards Chair

Organizing conference special sessions, workshops and tutorials

  • Tutorial on “Deep Learning for Graphs”, at WCCI 2024, July 2024
  • “Deep Learning for Graphs“ at WCCI 2024, Daniele Castellana (University of Florence), Federico Errica (NEC Laboratories Europe), Filippo Maria Bianchi (UiT),   Nicolò Navarin (University of Padua),  Luca Pasa (University of Padua), Davide Rigoni (University of Padua),  Daniele Zambon (Swiss AI Lab IDSIA, Università della Svizzera italiana)
  • Special session on “Informed Machine Learning for Complex Data” at ESANN 2024, Luca Oneto (University of Genoa), Nicolò Navarin (University of Padua), Alessio Micheli (Università di Pisa), Luca Pasa (University of Padua), Claudio Gallicchio (Università di Pisa), Davide Anguita (University of Genoa)
  • Tutorial on “Deep Learning for Graphs”, at ECML/PKDD 2023, September 2023
  • Tutorial on  “Pervasive Artificial Intelligence” at ECML/PKDD 2023, Antonio Carta (Università di Pisa), Patrizio Dazzi (Università di Pisa), Claudio Gallicchio (Università di Pisa), September 2023
  • Tutorial on  “Pervasive Artificial Intelligence” at AAAI 2023, Antonio Carta (Università di Pisa), Patrizio Dazzi (Università di Pisa), Claudio Gallicchio (Università di Pisa), February 2023
  •  “Deep Learning for Graphs“ at IJCNN 2023, Daniele Castellana (University of Florence), Federico Errica (NEC Laboratories Europe), Ming Jin (Monash University), Yixin Liu (Monash University),  Nicolò Navarin (University of Padua), Shirui Pan (Griffith University), Luca Pasa (University of Padua), Senzhang Wang (Central South University), Feng Xia (RMIT University), Daniele Zambon (Swiss AI Lab IDSIA, Università della Svizzera italiana), Yizhen Zheng (Monash University), July 2023
  • “Graph Representation Learning”  at ESANN 2023, Federico Errica (NEC), Alessio Micheli (Università di Pisa), Luca Pasa (University of Padua), Nicolò Navarin (University of Padua), Marco Podda (Università di Pisa), Daniele Zambon (IDSIA), October 2023
  • Workshop on “Pervasive Artificial Intelligence” at WCCI 2022, Antonio Carta (Università di Pisa), Patrizio Dazzi (ISTI-CNR),  Magdalini Eirinaki (San Jose State University), Iraklis Varlamis (Harokopio University of Athens), July 2022
  • Deep learning for graphs, special session at WCCI 2022, Shirui Pan (Monash University), Daniele Grattarola (IDSIA), Miao Zhang (Aalborg University), Nicolò Navarin (University of Padova), Feng Xia (Federation University Australia), Daniele Zambon (IDSIA), July 2022
  • Tutorial on “Deep Learning for Graphs“, at IJCNN 2021, July 2021
  • Deep learning for graphs, special session at ESANN 2021, Filippo Maria Bianchi (NORCE – the Norwegian Research Center, Norway), Benjamin Paassen (The University of Sydney, Australia), Cesare Alippi (Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland), October 2021
  • Tutorial on “Deep learning for graphs Processing symbolic relationships with neural networks“,  at ECAI’20, August 2020
  • Tutorial on Deep learning for graphs at WCCI’20, July 2020
  • Learning Representations for Structured Data session at WCCI-IJCNN 2020,  Filippo Maria Bianchi (UIT, NO),Thomas Gärtner (University of Nottingham, UK), Nicolò Navarin (University of Padova, Italy), Alessandro Sperduti (University of Padova, Italy)
  • Tensor Decompositions in Deep Learning session at ESANN 2020, Danilo Mandic (Imperial College, United Kingdom)
  • Tutorial on Deep Learning for Graphs, at IJCNN 2019.
  • Learning Representations for Structured Data session at IJCNN 2019,  Thomas Gärtner (University of Nottingham, UK), Nicolò Navarin (University of Padova, Italy), Alessandro Sperduti (University of Padova, Italy)
  • Explainable Machine Learning session at IJCNN 2019, Paulo J. G. Lisboa (LJMU, United Kingdom), Jose D. Martin, (Universitat de València, Spain), Alfredo Vellido (UPC, Spain)
  • Tutorial on Deep Learning for Graphs, at INNS-BDDL 2019
  • Societal Issues in Machine Learning: When Learning from Data is Not Enough session, at ESANN 2019, Battista Biggio (Università di Cagliari, Italy), Paulo J. G. Lisboa (LJMU, United Kingdom), Jose D. Martin, (Universitat de València, Spain), Luca Oneto (Università di Genova, Italy), Alfredo Vellido (UPC, Spain)
  • Tutorial on Deep Learning for Graphs, at  ECML-PKDD 2018, Alessio Micheli
  • Machine explanation: Interpretation of Machine Learning Models for Medicine and Bioinformatics session, at CIBB 2018,  Ian Jarman (LJMU, UK), José D. Martín-Guerrero (Universitat de València, Spain), Alfredo Vellido (UPC, Spain)
  • Deep Learning for Structured and Multimedia Information (DEEPSM) session, at WCCI2018, Silvio Jamil F. Guimarães (PUC Minas, Brazil) and Zenilton K. G. Patrocínio Jr (PUC Minas, Brazil)
  • Deep Learning in Bioinformatics and Medicine session, at ESANN 2018, Miguel Atencia (Universidad de Málaga, Spain), Paulo J. G. Lisboa (LJMU, United Kingdom), Jose D. Martin, (Universitat de València, Spain), Ruxandra Stoean (University of Craiova, Romania), Alfredo Vellido (UPC, Spain)
  • Parallel Computations for Neural Networks, at HPCS 2017, Andreea Anghel, Georgios Kathareios, Mitch Gusat (IBM)
  • Cloud in Robotics and Cyber Physical Systems, at IEEE Cloudnet 2016 , co-chair with Antonio Bicchi (UNIPI, IIT)

Member of the Program Committee of

  • International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2020-2024)
  • Neural Information Processing and Systems (NeurIPS 2019-2023)
  • International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2022-2024)
  • International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018-2024) – Senior PC
  • International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2020) – Senior PC
  • European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2020-2024) – Senior PC
  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2019-2024)  – Senior PC
  • GCLR 2021 Workshop at AAAI (2021-2024)
  • IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2018-2024)
  • European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (ESANN 2019-2024)
  • International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN 2019)
  • International Workshop on Parallel Computations for Neural Networks (PCNN 2018)
  • International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN 2011-2023)
  • International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2017-2022)
  • IEEE Symposium on Deep Learning (DL 2016-2019)
  • International Conference on Cloud and Robotics (ICCR 2017)
  • International Conference on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM 2016)
  • International Conference on Signal Processing, Computing and Control (ISPCC 2015)
  • World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC2011)

Reviewing Activity

Project Evaluator and Rapporteur

  • EU projects
    • Reviewer: H2020 ELISE, H2020 VISION, HE ELIAS
    • Evaluator: HE MSCA actions
    • Evaluator: ERC StG
  • Cyprus research council
  • Estonian Research Council
  • MIUR EUROSTARS
  • POR FESR Lazio
  • University of Padova “Joint University-Industry projects”
  • University of Firenze “Competitive projects for fixed-term contract researchers”
  • University of Verona “Fundamental Research” and “Joint Projects” programme
  • Romanian National Research Council (CNCS)  Projects

Ph.D. Reviewer

  • Ph.D. defendant for the KTH Royal Institute of Technology
  • External Ph.D. reviewer for the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC)
  • External Ph.D. reviewer for the Université de Rennes I
  • External Ph.D. reviewer for Università di Pavia, Università di Trento, Roma La Sapienza, Politecnico di Milano, Università di Genova