Laura Emilia Maria Ricci Full Professor    Pisa DLT Lab Department of Computer Science University of Pisa Largo Bruno Pontecorvo, 3, I-56127, Pisa, Italy email: laura.ricci(AT)unipi.it Linkedin: Linkedin  Scholar Profile: Google Scholar Question time: Wednesday, 15.00-18.00 PM

I am leading the Pisa Distributed Ledger Laboratory, we design and implement layer-2 solutions for distributed ledgers, we study solutions for Self Sovereign Identity, we propose analysis for blockchain transactions. The laboratory includes 3 permanent members, 1 research associate, 2 permanent members working  at CNR, 7 PhD students, and several collaborators. Take a look at our Pisa Distributed Ledger Lab web page!

TPC co-chair ICBTA 2026@Seoul, 9th Int. Conf. on Blockchain Technology and Applications, South Korea, 11-13 December 2026

 

• [2002-ongoing] Coordinator of the Curriculum "Social systems and smart societies" of the National PhD program in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technolgies
• [2028-ongoing] Member of the Italian Distributed Ledger Technology Group,
• [2018-2019] - Member of the group of experts of the Italian Ministry of the Economic Development (MISE) for the definition of the national strategy for distributed ledgers and blockchains. The draft of the strategy is  here
  
• [2020] Selected Expert for the topic "System security" of the The Italian National Research Program (PNR 2021-2027), published here
• [2023] Member of the evaluation commette for the applications to Call for Proposal 2022 of Milano Hub, Bankitalia, topic: Distributed Ledgers Technologies
• [2025-2027] Coordinator for the University of Pisa unit, project "POESIA Esg, Ecosistema della Credibilità", Progetto Ministero del Made in Italy, Fondo per lo sviluppo di tecnologie e applicazioni di intelligenza artificiale, blockchain ed Internet of Things.
• [2026-2028] Coordinator for the University of Pisa unit, project  "Strumenti di Sviluppo per Applicazioni su Blockchain Ibrida", Progetto Ministero del Made in Italy, Fondo per lo sviluppo di tecnologie e applicazioni di intelligenza artificiale, blockchain ed Internet of Things.

• Associate editor of the ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice,  ACM DLT, the new ACM journal on Distributed Ledger Technology.
• Member of the Editorial Board of the Elsevier Journal Blockchain: Research and Applications
• Member of the Editorial Board of the Springer Journal Applied Network Science
• Member of the Editorial Board of the Springer Journal Peer to Peer Networking and Applications
• Section Editor of Springer Nature, SN Computer Science,  Section V,  Innovations in Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers

• Recently accepted papers (you can find all the papers here )
• A Survey Charting Trust Models and Systems in Self-Sovereign Identity, C.Turco, A.De Salve, D. Di Francesco Maesa, P. Mori, L. Ricci, Elsevier Computer Science Reviews, August 2026
• zk- VeriCert: Zero-Knowledge, Self Sovereign Identity and Blockchain-based SSL/TLS Certificate Verification, A. De Salve, Giuliani, P. Mori, L. Ricci, ACM DLT, Distributed Ledger Technologies, July 2026
  
• COD-SSI: Enforcing Mutual Privacy for Credential Oblivious Disclosure in Self Sovereign Identity, E. Onofri, A. De Salve, P. Mori, L. Ricci, R. Di Pietro, 31st European Symposium on Researcg on Computer Science Security (ESORICS) 2026, Roma September 2026
  
• E-CUBE: A Cross-chain Erasmus+ Management System, D.Tortola, M. Orrù, P. Mori, L. Ricci, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 2026
  
• Non-fungible Mutable Token: enabling and Protecting Mutability in NFT D. Di Francesco Maesa, F. Donini, P. Mori, L. Ricci. Elsevier Blockchain: Research and Applications,  May 2026
• CERBERUS: A Self-Sovereign Identity-based Authorization Framework for Autonomous Vehicle C. Turco, M. De Vincenzi, A. De Salve, I. Matteucci, P. Mori, L.Ricci, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC 2026-Spring, Nice, France, 9-12 June 2026
• Don't Swap Horses in Mainstream: a Centralized Study of Uniswap on Ethereum, M.Loporchio, D. Di Francesco Maesa, L. Ricci,  IEEE Compsac 2026, Madrid, Spain, July 7-10 2026
• ML- Based Wash Trading Detection on CEX Using Random Forest and CNN Autoencoder, Y. Yimame, D. Di Francesco Maesa, L. Ricci, R. de Aquino Silva, 6th Int. Work. on Dynamic Data Science and Big Data Analytics in Finance (DDS-BDAF 2026) @IEEE Compsac 2026, Madrid, Spain, July 7-10 2026
• When Bitcoin Rolls the Dice: An Analysis of Gambling Patterns in SatoshiDice, , C. Turco, G. Trudu, D. Di Francesco Maesa, L. Ricci, DLT2026 - 8th Distributed Ledger Technology Workshop, Pula, Italy, 4-6 June 2026
• Orchestrating Multi-Issuer Credentials in Self Sovereign Identity: an Implementation with Proof of Ownership, C. Turco, A. De Salve, P. Mori, L. Ricci, 31th IEEE Symposium on Computer and Communications, IEEE ISCC 2026,Vilamoura, Portugal, 23-26 June 2026
• Risc0Flow: A Toolkit for Automatic Orchestration in RISC-0 Applications, D.Tortola, G. Cristofaro, A. De Salve, P. Mori, L. Ricci,  31th IEEE Symposium on Computer and Communications, IEEE ISCC 2026, Vilamoura, Portugal, 23-26 June 2026
• G. Arajio, Rogerio Aquino, A. R. Pinto, L. Ricci,, Comparative Analysis of Unspervised Anomaly Detection Algorithms for Bitcoin Transaction Fraud Detection: A Large Scale Empirical Study,   IEEE Access, December 2025
• M.Cascino, A.De Salve, A. Lisi, P. Mori, L. Ricci,, Selective disclosure approaches in Self-Sovereign Identity: an experimental comparison,   IEEE Access, December 2025
• M.Loporchio, A. Bernasconi, D. Di Francesco Maesa, L. Ricci, ERC-1155 Under the Lens:  a Graph-based Analysis of the Ethereum Multi-Token Standard, Applied Network Science, December 2025
• C. Turco, A. De Salve, P. Mori, L. Ricci, , From Solo Issuing to an Orchestra and Seamless Augmentation of Self-Sovereign Identity for Multi-Signature Verifible Credentials,  accepted as a poster, ACM SAC'26, Thessaloniki, Greece, March 23-27th, 2026
  
• Recent  Program commette membership:

• IEEE ICBC, International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, Brisbane, Australia, 1-5 June 2026
• 8th Blockchain and Internet of Things Conference, BIOTC 2026, Tokyo, 8-10 July 2026
• IWBOSE 2026, 9th Int. Workshop on Blockchain Oriented Software Engineering, 17-20 March 2026, Limassol, Cyprus
• TCP co-chair of ICBTA, Blockchain Technology, Kanazawa, Japan, 12-14 December 2025

• "Non-fungible Mutable Token: Enabling and Protecting Mutability in NFT",  D. Di Francesco Maesa, F. Donini, P. Mori, L. Ricci. Elsevier Blockchain: Research and Applications, accepted for pubblication, May 2026
• "Skip index: supporting efficient inter-block queries and query authentication on the blockchain", M.Loporchio, A. Bernasconi, D. Di Fracesco Maesa, L. Ricci, accepted for pubblication, Elsevier Future Generation Computing Systems, accepted for pubblication, October 2024.
• "L2DART: a trust management system integrating blockchain and off-chain computation" A. De Salve, L. Franceschi, A. Lisi, P. Mori, L. Ricci, ACM TOIT, ACM Transaction on Internet Technology
• "Predicting Inflential Users in Online Social Networks Groups", B. Guidi, A. De Salve, R. Di Pietro, P. Mori, L. Ricci, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data
• "A Logical Key Hierarchy based approach to preserve content privacy in Decentralized Online Social Networks" , A. De Salve, R. Di Pietro, P. Mori, L. Ricci , IEEE Transaction on Dependable and Secure Computing
• "A blockchain based approach for the definition of auditable access control systems", Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, Paolo Mori, Laura Ricci,  Computers and Security, Elsevier, amon the most cited papers on Elsevier  Computer & Security, Scimago rank A journal.
• "Service Provisioning in Mobile Environments through Opportunistic Computing", M. Conti, D. Mascitti, A. Passarella, L. Ricci, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
• "Connected Components in Large Graphs by Vertex Pruning", E. Carlini, P. Dazzi, A. Lulli, C. Lucchese, IEEE Transaction on Parallel and Distributed Systems.
• "NG-DBScan: Scalable Density-Based Clustering for Arbitrary Data", M. Dell'Amico, A. Lulli, P.Michiardi, Proceeding VLDB Endowment 

• 2025-26 - Laboratorio di Programmazione di Rete - 3 CFU - Primo semestre, Laurea  Triennale in Informatica, Dipartimento di Informatica.
• 2025-26 - Laboratorio di Web Scraping - 6 CFU - Secondo Semestre,   Laurea  Triennale in Informatica, Dipartimento di Informatica.
• 2025-26 - Peer to Peer Systems and Blockchains - 9 CFU -Secondo Semestre, Laurea Magistrale in Informatica, Dipartimento di Informatica
  

Current  Students

• [2023-2026] Giuseppe Galano, PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, University of Pisa,  University of Camerino 
• [2023-2026] Yitbarek Yimame, PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, University of Pisa, University of Camerino 
• [2024-2027] Calogero Turco,  University of Pisa
  
• [2025-2028] Syed Muzakkir Reza, University of Pisa

Former  Students

• [2009]
  
• Luca Genovali, - PhD IMT, Lucca, .
• [2012]
  
• Emanuele Carlini - PhD, IMT, Lucca, currently researcher, HPCLab, ISTI-CNR, Pisa.
• [2015]
  
• Barbara Guidi -  PhD University of Pisa, currently associate professor at Department of Computer Science,. 
• [2017]
  
• Andrea De Salve - PhD University of Pisa, currently researcher at  ISASI-CNR, Sede di Lecce,
  
• Alessandro Lulli - PhD University of Pisa, currently Software Engineer, Domotz, Information Technology & Services 
• [2018]
• Damiano di Francesco Maesa, - PhD University of Pisa,  currently tenure track researcher  at Department of Computer Science,
• [2021]
• Andrea Michienzi - PhD University of Pisa, currently tenure track researcher at Department of Computer Science,.
• Adrian Spataru - co-tutela West University of Timisoara and Department of Computer Science,  Assistant Professor, Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara
  
• Moshin Ur Rahman, PhD University of Pisa,  Department of Computer Science,
• [2023]
  
• Andrea Lisi, PhD University of Pisa,  Department of Computer Science, currently Software Engineer, Domotz, Information Technology & Services,
  
• [2024]
  
• Matteo Loporchio,  PhD University of Pisa,  Research Contract, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa.
• [2025]
  
• Domenico Tortola,  PhD  University of Pisa, Postdoc IIT CNR, Pisa
• [2026]
• Ricardo Lopes Almeida,   PhD in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, University of Pisa and University of Camerino, currently  Ambiosfera Lda.
• Francesco Donini,  PhD in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, University of Pisa, and University of Camerino, currently  IIT CNR, Pisa
  
• Andrea Pelosi, PhD in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, University of Pisa and University of Camerino, currently,   PostDoc Researcher, University of Wien
  

• Blockchain technology
• Applied cryptography for blockchains: zero-knowledge, homorphic encryption
• Self Sovereign Identity (SSI)
  
• Layer-2 Solutions for Blockchains
• Decentralized Finance (De-Fi)
• Blockchain data anlytics
  
• Transaction analysis
• De-Fi smart contract analysis

For further information, send an e-mail to a laura.ricci(AT)unipi.it, or contact me during question time (on Wednesday15.00-18.00 PM).

• [2026-2028] Strumenti di Sviluppo per Applicazioni su Blockchain Ibrida, Fondo per lo sviluppo di tecnologie e applicazioni di intelligenza artificiale, blockchain e internet of things, Ministero per lo Sviluppo economico (MIMIT),
  
• [2025-2027] POESIA_4_DPP,  Fondo per lo sviluppo di tecnologie e applicazioni di intelligenza artificiale, blockchain e internet of things, Ministero per lo Sviluppo economico (MIMIt),
  
• [2024-2025] Advanced and Quantum-safe Solutions for Digital Identity and Digital Tracing”(AQuSDIT), Open Call partenariato SERICS, Spoke 5-Cryptography and Distributed Systems Security, 
• [2025] Ethereum Foundation Academic Grant “A Fair and Trustworthy Remuneration Framework for AI Model Training using Ethereum” (Grant ID: FY24-1512).,principal investigator Matteo Loporchio
• [2024] Ethereum Foundation Grant , principal investigator Damiano Di Francesco Maesa
• [2023-2025] PRIN "Awesome AWESOME: Analysis framework for WEb3 SOcial MEdia" , principal investigator Laura Ricci
• [2023-2025] PRIN "DLT-FRUIT: A user centered framework for facilitating DLTs FRUITion" , principal investigator  Damiano Di Francesco Maesa
  
• [2022] Ethereum Foundation Grant, "Cross chain authenticated queries", principal investigator Damiano Di Francesco Maesa
• [2019-2021] Local Responible for the University of Pisa of the H2020 European Project "HELIOS: A Context-aware Distributed Social Networking Framework"
• [2018-2020]  Progetto di Ricerca di Ateneo, PRA, Emerging Trends in Data Science.
• [2016-2018], Progetto di Ricerca di Ateneo, PRA, Big Data, Social Mining and Risk Management.
• [2013-2016] PRIN Security Horizons, partecipant
  
• [2010-2013] Contrail, Open Computing Infrastructure for Elastic Services,  Integrated Project by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) sponsorship program, partecipant
  
• [2006-2010] XtreemOS, Enabling LINUX for the Grid,  Integrated Project by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) sponsorship program, partecipant
  
• [2004-2008] CoreGrid, Foundations, Software Infrastructures and Applications for large scale distributed, GRID and Peer-to-Peer Technologies, Network of Excellence by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) sponsorship program, partecipant