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: my profile  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, 2 post-doc, 2 permanent members working  at CNR, 6 PhD students, and several collaborators. Take a look at our Pisa Distributed Ledger Lab web page!

The laboratory organizes the 7th edition of the Workshop on Blockchain theoRy and ApplicatIoNa, BRAINS'26, in conjunction with PerCom 2026, Pisa, 16-20 March 2026

 

• Coordinator of the Curriculum "Social systems and smart societies" of the National PhD program in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technolgies
• Principal Investigator - PRIN Research project "AWESOME: Analysis framework for WEb3 SOcial MEdia", 2023-2025, University of Pisa, University of Milan, University of Calabria.
• Coordinator of the Pisa Research Unit- Project Advanced and Quantum-safe Solutions for Digital Identity and Digital Tracing”(AQuSDIT), Open Call partenariato SERICS, Spoke 5-Cryptography and Distributed Systems Security, 2024-2025
• 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
• Member of the Italian Distributed Ledger Technology Group,
• Spring 2023 - Member of the evaluation commette for the applications to Call for Proposal 2022 of Milano Hub, Bankitalia, topic: Distributed Ledgers Technologies
• Spring 2020 - Selected Expert for the topic "System security" of the The Italian National Research Program (PNR 2021-2027), published here
• 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 

• Recently accepted papers (you can find all the papers here )
• A.Giuliani, A. De Salve, P. Mori, L. Ricci, "VeriCert:SSL/TSL Certificate Verification based on Self-Sovereign Identity and Blockchain, 4th EAI Int. Conf. on Blockchain Technology and Emerging Applications, Venice, 18-19 September, 2025.
• C.Turco, A. De Salve, D. Di Francesco Maesa,, P. Mori, L. Ricci, "An Aid to Mitigate Online Misinformation with Self-Sovereign Identity and Artificial Intelligence", 7th Int. Conf. on Blockchain Computing and Applications (BCCA 2025), Dubrovnick, Croatia, 14-17 October 2025
  
• A. Breglia, A. De Salve, P. Mori, L. Ricci, "Assessing the Anonimity of DIDs in Self-Sovereign Identity", 7th Distributed Ledger Technologies Workshop, Pizzo Calabro 9-14 June, 2025
• R. Almeida, D. Di Francesco Maesa, F. Baiardi, L. Ricci, "Let the NFT flow: a comparison between NFT architectures on Ethereum and the Flow Blockchain", IEEE NextGenDLT'25, in conjunction  with ICBC'25, Pisa, June 6th, 2025.
• D. Di Francesco Maesa, F. Donini, P. Mori, L. Ricci, "A Simulation Engine for Evaluating Smart Contracts Based Applications Sustainability"  IEEE TrustSense, 2nd Work. on Pervasive Computing Challenges in Trustable Crowdsensing Systems, in conjunction with IEEE Percom 2025, Washington, 21 March 2025
• M.Loporchio, A. Bernasconi, D. Di Fracesco Maesa, L. Ricci,, "Skip index: supporting efficient inter-block queries and query authentication on the blockchain", accepted for pubblication, Elsevier Future Generation Computing Systems, accepted for pubblication, October 2024.
• Recent  Program commette membership:
• Complex Networs 2025, 14th Int. Conf. on Complex Networks and their applications, Binghamton, New York, 9-11 December 2025
• 3rd IEEE Int.Conf. on Metaverse Computing, Metacom 2025, Seoul, Korea, August 2025
• 4th EAI Int. Conf. on Blockchain Technology and Emerging Applications, BlockTEA '25, September 18-19th Venice, Italy
• DLT 2025, 7th Distributed Ledger Technology Workshop, Pizzo Calabro, June 2025
  
• IEEE Global Blockchain Conference,  20-22 June 2025, Shangai, China
• 7th Conf. on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services, BRAINs'25, November 18-21, 2025 Zurich, Switzerland
• IEEE Annual Congress on Artificial Intelligence of Things (IEEE AIoT), 3-5 December 2025, Osaka, Japan

• "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,  among 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 

• 2024-25 - Laboratorio di Programmazione di Rete - 3 CFU, Primo semestre, Laura  Triennale in Informatica, Dipartimento di Informatica.
• 2024-25 - Laboratorio di Web Scraping- 6 CFU, Secondo Semestre, Laurea Triennale in Informatica, Dipartimento di Informatica
• 2024-25 - Peer to Peer e Blockchain - 6 CFU, Secondo Semestre, Laurea Magistrale in Informatica, Dipartimento di Informatica
  

Current  Students

• Francesco Donini, PhD student,  PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, coordinated by University of Camerino 2022-2025
• Ricardo Lopes Almeida, PhD student,  PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, coordinated by University of Camerino 2022-2025
• Andrea Pelosi, PhD student,  PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, coordinated by University of Camerino 2022-2025
• Giuseppe Galano, PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, coordinated by University of Camerino 2023-2026
• Yitbarek Yimame, PhD in BLockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology, coordinated by University of Camerino 2023-2026
• Calogero Turco, PhD Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, 2024-2027

Former  Students

• Luca Genovali, PhD IMT, Lucca, 2009.
• Emanuele Carlini, PhD, IMT, Lucca, 2012, permanent researcher, HPCLab, ISTI-CNR, Pisa.
• Barbara Guidi - PhD University of Pisa, 2015,  associate professor at Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa. 
• Andrea De Salve - PhD University of Pisa, 2017, permanent Researcher at Sede di Lecce,  ISASI-CNR.
• Alessandro Lulli - PhD University of Pisa, 2017, Software Engineer, Domotz, Information Technology & Services, 
• Damiano di Francesco Maesa, - PhD University of Pisa, 2018,  senior researcher (RTT) at Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa.,
• Andrea Michienzi - PhD University of Pisa, 2021, junior researcher (RTD-A) at Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa.
• Adrian Spataru- co-tutela West University of Timisoara and Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa,  2021, now post-doc, Facultatea de Matematica si Informatica, Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara 
• Moshin Ur Rahman, PhD, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, 2021
• Andrea Lisi, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, 2023
• Matteo Loporchio, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, 2024, Postdoc Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa. 
• Domenico Tortola, PhD student, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa 2025. Postdoc IIT CNr, Pisa

• Blockchain technology
• Applied cryptography for blockchains: set accumultators, zero-knowledge
• Self Sovereign Identity
• Layer-2 Solutions for Blockchains
• Blockchain data anlytics
  
• Transaction abalysis
• Smart contract analysis
• Token analyisis
  

For further information, send an e-mail to a laura.ricci(AT)unipi.it, or contact me during question time (on Thursday 15.00-18.00 PM).

• POESIA_4_DPP,  Fondo per lo sviluppo di tecnologie e applicazioni di intelligenza artificiale, blockchain e internet of things, Ministero per lo Sviluppo economico (MISE), 2025-2027
• Advanced and Quantum-safe Solutions for Digital Identity and Digital Tracing”(AQuSDIT), Open Call partenariato SERICS, Spoke 5-Cryptography and Distributed Systems Security, 2024-2025
• Ethereum Foundation Grant , July 2024, principal investigator Matteo Loporchio
• Ethereum Foundation Grant , July 2024, principal investigator Damiano Di Francesco Maesa
• PRIN "Awesome AWESOME: Analysis framework for WEb3 SOcial MEdia" [10/2023 - 9/2025], principal investigator Laura Ricci
• PRIN "DLT-FRUIT: A user centered framework for facilitating DLTs FRUITion" [12/2023 - 12/2025], principal investigator  Damiano Di Francesco Maesa
  
• Ethereum Foundation Grant, "Cross chain authenticated queries", July 2022., principal investigator Damiano Di Francesco Maesa
• Local Responible for the University of Pisa of the H2020 European Project "HELIOS: A Context-aware Distributed Social Networking Framework", 2019-2021
• PRA 2018-20, Progetto di Ricerca di Ateneo, Emerging Trends in Data Science, starting date July 2018.
• PRA 2016, Progetto di Ricerca di Ateneo, Big Data, Social Mining and Risk Management.
• PRIN Security Horizons [2/2013 - 1/2016]
• [2010-2013] Contrail, Open Computing Infrastructure for Elastic Services,  Integrated Project by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) sponsorship program.
• Ricerca Spontanea a Tema Libero, Resource Discovery on Large Collaborative Networks, 2008-2010.
• [2006-2010] XtreemOS, Enabling LINUX for the Grid,  Integrated Project by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) sponsorship program.
• [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.