Position/Role

Computer Engineering Professor Politecnico of Turin and Director Hub AI@polito

Professional career

In 1998 Barbara Caputo graduated in Physics at the Sapienza University of Rome, continuing her education with a specialization course in Biomedical Signal and Image Processing. Her research went on abroad, first at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, then at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco and at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, where she received her PhD of research in Computer Science in 2005. She moved to Switzerland to work at the Idiap Research Institute in Martigny and later became the Research Manager of a group on artificial cognitive systems at the Idiap Institute. Back in Italy, since 2013 she is associate professor of the Department of Automatic and Management Computer Engineering at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome. She is now full professor of Computer Engineering at the Politecnico di Torino and senior researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology.

Scientific results

The main research interest of Barbara Caputo, defined by the media as "the woman who talks to robots", is the development of algorithms for learning, recognition and categorization of visual and multimodal models for artificial autonomous systems, just like the robot. Leading the robotic engineering group Visual Learning and Multimodal Perception (VALEM) since 2013, Barbara Caputo, with her colleagues, is developing algorithms to allow robots to learn information directly from the internet. So it will be possible to create robots capable of learning but also of interacting and reacting to the unexpected with a wide range of uses, from home robotics to assistance for the elderly, the disabled and children.

Editorial work and publications

Barbara Caputo is the author of several publications on international newspapers, including:

(2016) Kuzborskij I, Orabona F, Caputo B. Scalable Greedy Algorithms for Transfer Learning. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, arXiv:1408.1292.

(2015) Atzori M, Gijsberts A, Kuzborskij I, Caputo B, et al. Characterization of a Benchmark Database for Myoelectric Movement Classification. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 23(1):73-83. 

(2014) Castellini C, Artemiadis P, Wininger M, Caputo B, et al. Proceedings of the first workshop on Peripheral Machine Interfaces: Going beyond traditional surface electromyography. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 8:22. 

(2014) Gijsberts A, Bohra R, Sierra Gonzalez D, Caputo B, et al. Stable Myoelectric Control of a Hand Prosthesis using Non-Linear Incremental Learning. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 25:8. 

(2014) Tommasi T, Orabona F, Caputo B. Learning Categories From Few Examples With Multi Model Knowledge Transfer. The IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 36(5):928-41. 

(2013) Gijsberts A, Caputo B. Exploiting accelerometers to improve movement classification for prosthetics. IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitative Robotics, 2013:6650476. 

(2012) Atzori M, Gijsberts A, Heynen S, Hager AG, Castellimi C, Caputo B, Müller H. Experiences in the creation of an electromyography database to help hand amputated persons. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics,180:828-32.

Awards and prizes

In 2014 she won the prestigious Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) for the project "RoboExNovo Robots learning about objects from externalized knowledge sources". The Starting Grant is a recognition that rewards the new talents in world research who are committed to building their laboratory in a European country.

Position/Role

Full rofessor of Computer Engineering and Director of the Department of Computer, Automatic and Management Engineering at La Sapienza University of Rome. 

Professional career

After graduating in Electronic Engineering from La Sapienza University of Rome in 1987, she continued her education with a PhD in Computer Science at the same university. Since November 2000 she has been a full professor of Information Processing Systems at the Faculty of Computer Engineering, Informatics and Statistics at La Sapienza University of Rome. From 2009 to October 2014 she is president of the InfoSapienza Centre. From November 2010 to April 2014 she is pro-rector for Infrastructure and Technology and coordinator of the Organismo di Indirizzo e Raccordo (OIR) of the same university. Since 2014 she is director of the Interuniversity Centre on Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems (ECONA). Since May 2015 she is director of the interdepartmental research centre "Sapienza Design Research". Since July 2015 she is President of KION S.p.A., a company belonging to the CINECA group. Since 2018, she has been Director of the Department of Computer, Automatic and Management Engineering at La Sapienza University of Rome.

Professor Catarci is very active in combating gender disparities and promoting the STEM disciplines among female students by promoting dedicated projects at both school and university level and acting as role-model for “Inspiring Girls” and other initiatives.

Scientific results

Tiziana Catarci’s main research interests are in theoretical and application oriented aspects of visual formalisms for databases, human-computer interaction, user interfaces, usability, smart environments, information visualization, data management, data quality and digital libraries. On these topics she has published over 200 papers in international journals, conferences and workshop proceedings, and 20 books. In particular, her contribution can be regarded as one of the first and most significant examples of deep analysis and formalization of the interaction between the user and the database, which takes in consideration both usability issues and various database related aspects.

Editorial work and publications

Tiziana Catarci serves on the scientific committee and as a reviewer for many leading scientific journals and international conferences in the relevant fields, including ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, VLDB Journal, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, WWW Journal, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, ACM Interact, Computing Surveys, VLDB, ACM Sigmod, IEEE Multimedia, ACM CHI. 

She is the author of more than 200 scientific articles in international journals, including: 

(2019) Marco Angelini, Graziano Blasilli, Tiziana Catarci, Simone Lenti, Giuseppe Santucci. Vulnus: Visual Vulnerability Analysis for Network Security. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 25(1): 183-192.

(2018) Paolo Ceravolo, Tiziana Catarci,et al.:Big Data Semantics. J. Data Semantics7(2): 65-85.

(2014) Bauleo E, Carnevale S, Catarci T, Kimani S, Leva M, Mecella M. Design, realization and user evaluation of the SmartVortex Visual Query System for accessing data streams in industrial engineering applications. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 25(5):577-601.

(2010) Catarci T, Dix AJ, Kimani S, Santucci G. User-Centered Data Management. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

(2000) Catarci T. What Happened When Database Researchers Met Usability. Information Systems, 25(3):177-212. 

Awards and prizes

In 2003 she won the IBM Eclipse Innovation Award for the SEAWER project, SEmantic Annotation of WEb Resources. 

In 2014 she was the first female candidate for Rector in the secular history of La Sapienza University. 

In 2015 she received the honour of "Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana".

In 2016, she was invited to join the prestigious European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

In 2021, she received the international prize "Le Tecnovisionarie".

Position/Role

Corporate Social Responsibility Country Manager at IBM Italy and IBM. Master Inventor

Professional career

After graduating in Information Sciences at the University of Bari, she won a scholarship at the CNR of Genoa for the IT section. She spent two years of research at CORINTO (National Research Consortium for Object Technology) in Bari. Immediately afterwards she started working for IBM, where she held different roles in different sectors, but always in the field of innovative digital projects. She serves as the Manager Corporate Social Responsibility Country Manager at IBM Italia and IBM.

In 2016, she was selected by the Commissioner for implementation of the digital agenda of Italian Government, Diego Piacentini, and she has joined the Digital Transformation Team for the Prime Minister's Office. From February 2019 she is the new Director of IBM Foundation and also Corporate Citizenship manager for Italy. Floriana Filomena Ferrara has been awarded the title of Master Inventor since 2008, in her curriculum 21 patents in the digital field. Leader for the projects: NERD? & P-Tech.

Scientific results

Floriana Filomena Ferrara is author of 21 patents in the field of digital innovation.

She shares her enthusiasm about the digital world especially with her students. Floriana encourages teenager women students to undertake a career in computer science, thanks also to the project “NERD? - Is It Not For Women?”. This IBM project was born with Paola Velardi of Sapienza University. This Project is done in collaboration with several Italian Universities (Bari, Genova, Napoli, Padova, Alessandria, Milano, Roma). 100 IBM Volunteer Women support this Project #goodtechIBM.

Editorial work and publications

[2000-2018] #61 Publication in IBM Tech Disclosure Bulletin 

[1997] Ferrara, Corinto & Aphrodite a new Object Oriented methodology. SEDBT, CNR.

[1996] Ferrara, Clematis, Cassano, Spagnulo. Peucher&Douglass for the Processing Terrain with characterisation on "Triangolazione", “Rapporto Tecnico”, IMA 14/95.

[1996] Cassano, Clematis, Ferrara, Spagnulo, Network based parallel processing for terrain characterisation on irregular simple data. “High-Performance Computing and Networking”, HPCN Europe 1996: 940-941.

Awards and prizes

2008-2019 Master inventor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Master_Inventor

2015, One of the 100 woman in the Digital http://www.chefuturo.it/2015/08/100-donne-digitali-italia/

2016, One of the 100 woman in the Digital in Italy  http://startupitalia.eu/67126-20161229-le-100-donne-nel-digitale-del-2016

2017, One of 15 influential Italian women in the world of digital technology, technology and innovation of  https://www.digitalic.it/economia-digitale/donne-influenti-digitale-italia-digiwomen-2017

2017, When the innovation is woman: 150 women in Italy  http://startupitalia.eu/76729-20170815-150-profili-al-femminile-da-seguire-su-innovazione-startup-e-digitale

2018, Joniche Award http://www.eccellenzejoniche.it/

2018, One of the 150 woman in the Digital https://startupitalia.eu/95739-20180815-le-150-donne-da-seguire-in-italia-su-startup-innovazione-e-digitale

2019, Role model for System Company-Schoo http://www.elis.org/aiutiamo-i-ragazzi-realizzare-i-loro-sogni

2019, Woman of the Year Award for Innovation, by the magazine D la Repubblica delle donne 

Position/Role

Full professor of Computer Science at the University of Insubria in Varese.

Professional career

After graduating in Computer Science at the University of Milan in 1992, she continued her education with a PhD in Computer Science at the same university in 1998. During the summer of 1996 she carried out a period of research as a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In the following two years is a visiting researcher at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. In 1998 he returned to Italy and worked as assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Milan. Later she became full professor of Computer Science at the University of Insubria in Varese.

Scientific results

Her research activities are linked to various aspects of data management systems, including web security, access control and privacy. Recently she has been involved in several research projects such as "ISocial" which develops advanced systems for the protection of privacy in social networks. She worked on the EU Euphorbia project, which provided for a series of experiments on filtering documents on the Internet according to an impartial approach. The aim was to produce a new, more powerful and flexible information review system, able to adapt to the cultural needs of each user. This system is capable of making a selection based on the semantic content of the information, and adapts to the description of the topics on a given website. She is currently involved in security and privacy issues in the IoT (Internet of Things) and Big Data areas.

Editorial work and publications

She has signed numerous publications, including:

(2015) N. Laleh, B. Carminati, E. Ferrari. Risk Assessment in Social Networks based on User Anomalous Behaviour. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 15(2):295-308.

(2015) P. Colombo, E. Ferrari. Privacy aware access control for Big Data: a research roadmap. Big Data Research, 2(4).

(2014) Akcora C, Carminati B, Ferrari E, Kantarcioglu M. Detecting Anomalies in Social Network Data Consumption. Social Network Analysis Mining, 4(1):231.

(2014) Parra-Arnau J, Perego A, Ferrari E, Fornè J & Rebollo-Monedero D. Privacy-Preserving Enhanced Collaborative Tagging. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 26(1):180-193.

(2013) Carminati B, Ferrari E, Viviani M. Security and Trust in Online Social Networks, Synthesis Lectures on Information Security, Privacy and Trust. Morgan & Claypool.

(2011) Cao J, Carminati B, Ferrari E, Tan KL. CASTLE: Continuously Anonymizing Data Streams. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 8(3): 337-352.

(2010) Bonchi F, Ferrari E. Privacy-Aware Knowledge Discovery: Novel Applications and New Techniques. Chapman & Hall/CRC Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Series.

Articles from international conferences:

(2016) Carminati B, Colombo P, Ferrari E & Sagirlar G.Enhancing User Control on Personal Data Usage in Internet of Things Ecosystems. Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, San Francisco, USA.

(2016) Colombo P & Ferrari E. Towards Virtual Private NoSQL Datastores. Proceedings of the32nd IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, Helsinki, Finlandia.

(2014) Bahri L, Carminati B, Ferrari E. Community-based Identity Validation on Online Social Networks. Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Madrid, Spagna.

Awards and prizes

In 2009 Elena Ferrari was awarded for her research in the field of privacy and security by one of the two most important international associations of reference (IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) with the Technical Achievement Award. In 2011 she obtained the Google Research Award for her work in the field of privacy in social networks, while in 2014 she received the IBM Faculty Award for her investigation on big data privacy. She is IEEE fellow and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Distinguished Scientist.

Position/Role

Computer Science Professor at University of L'Aquila. Former Rector of University of L’Aquila (2013-2019)

Professional career

In 1981 she graduated in Information Science at the University of Pisa. In the same year she entered the Olivetti with the role of Researcher that she also maintained during the decade 1984-1994 at the CRN of Pisa. In 1994 she became full professor of computer science at the University of L'Aquila, where she later held various prestigious roles in university governance: from 1994 to 2000 she was Chairman of the Computer Science Degree Course and later Director of the Computer Science Department. In 2008 she became Dean of the Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences of the same university. From July 2012 to September 2013 she directed the Department of Engineering and Information Sciences and Mathematics (DISIM). Paola Inverardi was elected Director of the University of L'Aquila in the 2013/2014 academic year, a position she would hold until 31 October 2019.

Scientific results

Her main interests concern software engineering, with particular attention to the area of software architectures, which include, in addition to the structure organization of the system itself, the ways in which the different parts integrate and interact to form a single unit. In this context, she was involved in the analysis and check of both behavioral and quantitative architectural properties for distributed and mobile systems based on components. She is also actively involved in collaborating with important information technology and telecommunications industries.She regularly works as reviewer for international research agencies, foreign universities and the European Commission.

Editorial work and publications

She is author of numerous national and international publications, including:

(2011) Cortellessa V, Di Marco A, Inverardi P. Model-Based Software Performance Analysis. Springer 2011, isbn 978-3-642-13620-7. 

(2009) Pelliccione P, Inverardi P, Muccini H. CHARMY: A Framework for Designing and Verifying Architectural Specifications. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 35(3):325-346. 

(2004) Balsamo S, Di Marco A, Inverardi P, Simeoni M, Model-Based Performance Prediction in Software Development: A Survey. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 30(5):295-310. 

(2004) Muccini H, Bertolino A, Inverardi P, Using Software Architecture for Code Testing. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 30(3):160-171. 

(2003) Inverardi P, Tivoli M, Deadlock-free software architectures for COM/DCOM Applications. Journal of Systems and Software, 65(3):173-183. 

(2001) F Aquilani, S Balsamo, P Inverardi: Performance analysis at the software architectural design level. Performance Evaluation, 45(2):147-178. 

(2000) Inverardi P, Wolf AL, Yankelevich D, Static checking of system behaviors using derived component assumptions. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 9 (3), 239-272. 

(1995) Inverardi P, Nesi M, Deciding observational congruence of finite-state CCS expressions by rewriting Theoretical Computer. Science, 139(1):315-354. 

(1995) Inverardi P, Wolf AL, Formal specification and analysis of software architectures using the chemical abstract machine model. IEEE transactions on Software Engineering, 21(4):373-386. 

(1993) Inverardi P, Mazzanti F, Experimenting with Dynamic Linking with Ada. Software: Practice and Experience, 23(1):1-14.

Awards and prizes

In May 2011 she  gained an honorary PhD from Mälardalen University in Sweden and, in 2013, the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Service Award "for outstanding and sustained contributions to software engineering community". Moreover she is also a member of the ACM Europe Council and of the European Academy. 

Position/Role

Full Professor at the BioRobotics Institute of the School of Advanced Studies Sant'Anna in Pisa. Professor at the National University of Singapore.

Professional career

After graduating in Computer Science at the University of Pisa in 1993, she continued her education with a PhD in Robotics at the University of Genoa in 1998. The following year she became a research fellow and then a researcher in Biorobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa. From 2001 to 2002 she was also a visiting researcher at the Humanoid Robotics Institute of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2006 she is associate professor and since 2014 full professor of Biorobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa. She is also a professor at the National University of Singapore, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Scientific results

Cecilia Laschi’s research interest is Biorobotics. Starting from experiences in basic robotics, she investigated bioinspired solutions for service robotics. Recently, she worked on an ambitious project grown in a tank at the Research Centre on Sea Technologies and Marine Robotics in Livorno, where the model was a common octopus, Octopus vulgaris. Studying this cephalopod’s movement, in the OCTOPUS European project, Cecilia Laschi and her team put the basis for the biomimetics of the future: designing and developing bioinspired robots, built with soft materials. The first prototype of soft robot arm imitates the muscular structure of the octopus arm and is built with siliconic materials, thanks to novel actuators giving a contraction of the muscular structure and a special braided structure inspired to the octopus connective tissue, covered by a an artificial skin with suckers. The robot arm works in water because, similarly to the octopus, it uses the mechanics of the interaction with water, mimicking the octopus arm bending and the elongation. The technologies developed by mimicking the octopus are now finding further development in many projects on several applications, ranging from marine explorations to the biomedical field, in surgery and assistance to the elderly. This research brought to the development of the new research area of soft robotics, at international level.

Cecilia Laschi’s name is also linked to another important project: in 2007 she contributed to the birth, in Tokyo, of the “RoboCasa” joint lab of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Waseda University, where Italian and Japanese researchers could work together in frontier research. Related to her expertise in humanoid robotics is the birth of iDroid01, produced by a spin-off company of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, RoboTech srl, that she founded. iDroid01 is the first personal robot sold in parts to assemble, in eight countries, able to speak, understand basic commands, see, move its head following sounds, show feelings and especially learn, by storing behaviour schemes.

Laschi is among the inventors of another achievement of robotics in Pisa: DustBot, the dustmen robots. DustClean, which swaps street with brushes and sprays, and DustCart, a “snowman” coloured in green or blue, with two wheels, which comes to the doorstep upon call, open its stomach-drawer, receives the garbage bag and brings it out of the historical city centre. The two Italian Wall-es – on which Laschi has been worked from 2006, also with RoboTech srl – have been already put in service in an experimental session in a small village in Tuscany.

Editorial work and publications

Cecilia Laschi is author of many publications in international scientific journals (see http://www.santannapisa.it/en/personale/cecilia-laschi for the complete list), among which:

(2019) T. George Thuruthel, B. Shih, C. Laschi, M. Tolley, “Soft robot perception using embedded soft sensors and recurrent neural networks”, Science Robotics 4(26).

(2018) M. Cianchetti, C. Laschi, A. Menciassi, P. Dario, “Biomedical applications of soft robotics”, Nature Reviews Materials, 3(6), pp.143-153.

(2018) T. George Thuruthel, Y. Ansari, E. Falotico, C. Laschi, “Control Strategies for Soft Robotic Manipulators: A Survey”, Soft Robotics 5(2), pp.149-163.

(2017) C. Laschi, “Helping robots blend into the background”, Science, 358(6360), p.169.

(2017) E. Falotico, A. Berthoz, P. Dario, C. Laschi, “Sense of movement: Simplifying principles for humanoid robots”, Science Robotics, 2(13).

(2016) Laschi C, Mazzolai B. Lessons from nature: the symbiosis of morphological computation and soft robotics. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 23. 
(2016) Calisti M, Falotico E, Laschi C. Hopping on Uneven Terrains With an Underwater One-Legged Robot. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters,1.1:461-468. 
(2016) Cianchetti M, Laschi C. Pleasant to the Touch: By Emulating Nature, Scientists Hope to Find Innovative New Uses for Soft Robotics in Health-Care Technology. IEEE Pulse, 7(3):34-37. 
(2016) Cauli N, Falotico E, Bernardino A, Santos-Victor J, Laschi C. Correcting for Changes: Expected Perception-Based Control for Reaching a Moving Target. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, 23(1):63-70. 
(2015) Cianchetti M, Calisti M, Margheri L, Kuba M, Laschi C. Bioinspired locomotion and grasping in water: the soft eight-arm OCTOPUS robot. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 10, 035003. 
(2015) Renda F, Giorgio-Serchi F, Boyer F, Laschi C, Modelling cephalopod-inspired pulsed-jet locomotion for underwater soft robots. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, 10(5). 
(2015) Calisti M, Corucci F, Arienti A, Laschi C. Dynamics of underwater legged locomotion: Modeling and experiments on an octopus-inspired robot. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, 10(4). 
(2014) Renda F, Giorelli M, Calisti M, Cianchetti M, Laschi C. Dynamic Model of a Multibending Soft Robot Arm Driven by Cables. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 30, 1109-1122. 
(2014) Laschi C, Cianchetti M. Soft Robotics: New Perspectives for Robot Bodyware and Control. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 2. 
(2013) Kim S, Laschi C, Trimmer B. Soft robotics: a bioinspired evolution in robotics. Trends in Biotechnology, 31, 287-294.

Full list online.

Awards and prizes

Co-founder in 2004 of the “RoboTech srl” academc spin-off company of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, in the field of edutainment robotics. Co-author of sixteen patents, in Italy, Europe, Japan.

Position/Role

CEO of DAXO GROUP and DAXOLAB, President of DONNE 4.0 and Vicepresident of ARTES 4.0

Professional career

Darya Majidi is an Italian-Iranian digital entrepreneur, computer scientist, expert in artificial intelligence, author, university professor, human and digital rights activist and keynote speaker. She is a pioneer and visionary of Information Technology in Italy. She has actively participated in the digital transformation of our country for over 30 years, with experiences gained in the public, private, academic and international fields. She has created startups and innovative companies, boasts merger & acquisition references among her international companies and corporates and experience in private equity and venture capital which has seen her as a protagonist in the transformation of the startups she created into structured companies. 

She is currently CEO, founder and owner of the Daxo Group, a strategic consultancy and digital transformation training company that for over 10 years has been accompanying its prestigious clients in their digital transformation and training with particular attention to female digital empowerment with a view to closing digital gender gap. Daxo Group is the first company in Italy certified with ISO 30415 with a view to implementing Diversity & Inclusion policies.

CEO and owner of Daxolab, coworking, accelerator and business incubator which to date has given life to around 20 innovative startups and hosts a unique eco-system of professionals, SMEs and large companies.

Founder and President of the Donne 4.0, supports the digital empowerment of girls and women at a national and international level. Donne 4.0 represents a unique association on the international scene in combining technological and digital knowledge and skills with aspects of ethics and soft skills.

Vice President of the ARTES 4.0 Competence Center, led by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, supports technological transfer between companies and universities. Speaker, lecturer, mentor, and TEDx speaker and Member of the Singularity University. 

She was Councilor for Innovation of the city of Livorno, helping to transform the city into a Smart City, creating systems and services to simplify the relationship between the public administration with businesses, citizens and professional bodies. The activities carried out have received numerous national and international awards.

She was President of the Young Entrepreneurs Group of Confindustria Livorno and Vice President of Confindustria di Livorno with responsibility for research and innovation. She has numerous collaborations with prestigious international universities, including the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, the Scuola Normale of Pisa, the Rome Business School and others.

She is a mother, a role model, an activist woman who hopes to impact the world in a concrete way.

Editorial work and publications

Darya Majidi. Donne 4.0. 2018.

Darya Majidi. Sorellanza digitale. Femminismo 4.0. 2020.

Awards and prizes

In 2021, she was mentioned  by the magazine D Repubblica as one of the 100 women who are changing the world and in 2022 by Io Donna Corriere della sera among the 10 women impacting Italy.

In October 2023, she was recognized as one of the most powerful women in the world by  Fortune Italia,  which featured her on the cover.

Position/Role

Director of Research Development & Strategy at Medicaltech srl. President emerita of Talent4Rise

Professional career

After the graduation in computer science, she continues her studies with a specialization in cybernetics / artificial intelligence and electronic systems engineering. Since 1989 she has been a researcher at the Central Research Laboratory of an important and innovative Italian telecommunications company. Then she started her contribution to some international standardization committees, in particular the one related to the VHDL language. Since 1993 she has been manager of R&D projects on areas related to logical synthesis automation tools, using expert systems, neural networks, fuzzy logic and project coordinator, in an international context, for the research and application of video encoding and decoding algorithms. Since 2000 she has been responsible for Multimedia Content Delivery projects and Network Architectures. In 2013 he coordinated activities related to telemedicine and energy saving for the smart city in collaboration with Monzino and Milano Ricerche Cardiology Center. In 2014 she won a public selection for titles for a Collaboration with the University of Milan at the Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences. In 2013 she founded, with a group of colleagues, an association of women (Talent4Rise, which, under her direction, would become a founding member of the Triulza Foundation, civil society pavillon for EXPO2015). The aim is to provide visibility to female STEM talents. She held the position of Chairwoman and member of the General Council of the Triulza Foundation until 2016. Next she was appointed Chairwoman Emerita and Vice President and, during the same period, she was appointed as Strategic Marketing Director for an ICT company. Since 2014 she has been a member of the Board of Directors of an in-house company of a municipality in the Milan hinterland that groups together local pharmacies.
 

Scientific results

For about 30 years Mirella Mastretti has been dealing with innovative areas both as a researcher and a teacher of advanced training, and as manager in academia, civil society and ICT companies contexts. Her activities involved the coordination of funded projects at national and international level. Member of international scientific and standardization committees, she contributed to the VHDL language definition, to original logical synthesis tools (patented) implementation and to innovative algorithms for audio/video, AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications and neural networks. 

She always managed projects and opportunities to liven up the debate on innovation in health and life-science, the role of science and technology in the society, with particular focus on methods, tools and technologies, to ensure a good quality of life and assistance for chronic or elderly people and for inclusive training; all this has been carried out in a context of "sharing economy" that sees the collaboration between companies, the academic world and the third sector

Editorial work and publications

[1990] Antoniazzi S., Mastretti M. An Interactive Environment for Hardware/Software System Design at the Specification Level. Microprocessing and Microprogramming, vol. 30. 

[1991] Antoniazzi S., Mastretti M. An Architectural Design Support Environment for High-Performance Digital Systems. Microprocessing and Microprogramming, vol.32. 

[1994 ]Balboni A., Mastretti M., Stefanoni M. Static Analysis of VHDL ModelEvaluation. Proceedings of EURO-VHDL. 

[1995] Mastretti M., Sturlesi M. Tomasello S. Static Analysis of VHDL Code: Simulation Efficiency and Complexity. Proceedings VHDL: Champions of the Second Generation, San Diego, California.

[1995] Mastretti M., Sturlesi M. Tomasello S., Busi M., Sarvello R. VHDL Quality: Syhtnesizability, Complexity and Efficiency Evaluation. European Design Automation Conference with EURO-VHDL ’95, Brighton, September.

[1996] Mastretti M., Sturlesi M., Tomasello S. Quality Measures and Analysis: A Way to improve VHDL Models, Hardware Component Modeling. Kluwer Academic Publisher.

[1996] Mastretti M., Sturlesi M. Tomasello S., Busi M., Sarvello R. Static Analysis of VHDL Code: the SAVE project. Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Achieving Quality in Software (AquIS’96).

[1996]Mastretti M. Current Issues in Electronic Modeling. Kluwer Academic Publisher.

[1998] Mastretti M., Paolillo E., Di Bello P., Mercandalli D. Technologies for the Information Society, Developments and Opportunities, IOS Press.

[1999] Boscolo M., Mastretti M., Paolillo E. Technology as the Catalyst of Users' Acceptance in Electronic Commerce. Flexible Working, New Network Technologies, pp. 121-132.

[2015] Mastretti M. Best Practices for EXPO2015, Tecniche Nuove.

[2016] Mastretti M. Impresa che funziona - come finanziare ricerca e innovazione con i fondi pubblici, Sandit.

Awards and prizes

In 1989 she received the 'Milano Ricerche' award.

In 2012 she received the "Progetto Regione Lombardia" award (SURE-SMAU).

In 2014 she received the "Milan Chamber of Commerce Award" for the Rise2Up project.

In 2015 she was appointed "Digital champion", ambassador of innovation, by Riccardo Luna, at the request of the Prime Minister.

In 2016 she was appointed President Emeritus of Talent4Rise.

Position/Role

Vice President BT Security EMEA & APAC at BT

Professional career

Graduated in computer science and mathematics from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, she later obtained an MBA in technology and innovation from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

From 2003 to 2008 she worked at Avnet Information Security & Risk Management as VP Products and Services. In 2008 he worked in Eurekify, with the role of Vice President EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). From 2009 to 2015 she is in CA Technogies, with the initial role of EMEA Sales Director and then Head of Security Strategy, also in EMEA. From 2016 to 2018 she is in HP, where she leads the ESS (Enterprise Security Services) activities as Head of South EMEA. In March 2018 he joined BT, where he leads a pan-European team of security experts protecting some of the world's most important and complex organisations against the ever-increasing cyber threats. 

Scientific results

Hila Meller has developed a significant experience along the years applying methods of Cyber Security both in military and defence environments as well as in the commercial and civilian space. She is recognized as one of the first pioneering experts of Security for ERP systems, acting as a special Security advisor for more than 30 projects. She developed a significant experience in the area of Identity and Access Management, contributing to the creation of a start-up which was later acquired by CA Technologies. In BT she gained additional experience related to Cyber Intelligence use cases and the application of Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security scenarios.

She is often invited to attend as keynote speaker at Information Technology conferences and trade exhibitions. Some past examples include: RSA Conference in San Francicso, Kuppinger Cole EIC conference in Munich, Cyberweek in Tel Aviv, Security summit in Milan  and Forum PA in Romea.

Position/Role

Full Professor in Computer Science at La Sapienza University of Rome

Professional career

After graduating in Computer Science at the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1993, she continued her education with a PhD in Computer Engineering at the same university. During her PhD she won a prestigious Fulbright scholarship, thanks to which she was a Visiting Research Associate at the Advanced Communications Technologies laboratory of Boston University in 1996, and the following year at the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Texas at Dallas. In 1998, she collaborated with the Department of Electronics and Information of the Politecnico di Milano. The following year she became a research fellow at the Politecnico di Milano. Since the following year she has been a research fellow at the Politecnico di Milano and also carries out teaching activities. Since 2001 she has been a tenured researcher in Computer Science at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she became an associate professor in 2006 and a full professor in 2021. Since January 2021 she has been Pro-Rector with responsibility for the development of entrepreneurial culture for the enhancement of the third mission.

Scientific results

Chiara Petrioli's research activity concerns the development of solutions for next-generation wireless systems, sensor networks and the "Internet of things". In particular, Chiara Petrioli coordinated the European GENESI project which developed innovative static and dynamic structural monitoring systems for buildings, bridges and tunnels, tested in the construction phase of the B1 metro in Rome and the construction of the Pont de la Poya in Switzerland. The technologies developed in GENESI allow to provide real-time data for long periods of time thanks to a new communication paradigm, based on wake up radio, which allows the devices to consume energy only when they have to perform operations or communicate, and thanks the ability to power devices through energy harvesting, i.e. to collect energy from the environment through micro-wind turbines and solar cells. In a collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Chiara Petrioli's team has therefore developed micro-climatic monitoring systems, shocks and vibrations whose data are helping to define "good practices and guidelines" to increase the safety of works of art in the transport phase. These systems have been used within the Safe-Art project to monitor over forty transports of important works of art (such as the Pietà Rondinini, the Narciso by Caravaggio, the Marcello of the Louvre, the Livia Orante of the Vatican Museums, the Crater of Eufronio of the Museum of Villa Giulia). Chiara Petrioli also proposed solutions to extend the “Internet of things” to marine environments. Thanks to the technologies developed by its group and by twenty international partners in the SUNRISE project, submarine sensor nodes and autonomous submarine vehicles interconnected in a network have been developed and they are able to cooperate and perform complex tasks. These technologies are laying the foundations for creating an intelligent monitoring system for the marine environment, making it possible to sustainably exploit its resources and allowing policies based on safeguarding the environment to be based on quantitative data. The SUNRISE system can be employed in various application contexts: from environmental monitoring, to the conservation and enhancement of submerged archaeological sites, to the protection of critical infrastructures and maritime borders, to the monitoring of aquaculture farms. In December 2016 it was included in NT100, i.e. the list of Nominet Trusts on the best 100 "global social tech changing our lives".

Editorial work and publications

Chiara Petrioli is, or was, a member of the editorial board of numerous scientific journals. She has signed numerous publications, including:

(2016) Ateniese G, Bianchi G, Capossele A, Petrioli C, Spenza D. Low-cost Standard Signatures for Energy-Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks. ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems.

(2015) Petrioli C, Petroccia R, Potter JR, Spaccini D. The SUNSET framework for simulation, emulation and at-sea testing of underwater wireless sensor networks. Ad Hoc Networks, 34:224-238.

(2015) Basagni S, Petrioli C, Petroccia R, Spaccini D. CARP: A Channel-aware Routing Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Wireless Networks. Ad Hoc Networks, 34:92-104.

(2015) Spenza D, Magno M, Basagni S, Benini L, Paoli M, Petrioli C. Beyond Duty Cycling: Wake-up Radio with Selective Awakenings for Long-lived Wireless Sensing Systems. IEEE INFOCOM, Hong Kong, 522-530.

(2014) Petrioli P, Spenza D, Tommasino P, Trifiletti A. A Novel Wake-Up Receiver with Addressing Capability for Wireless Sensor Nodes. Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems Conference 2014:18-25.

(2014) La Porta T, Petrioli C, Phillips C, Spenza D. Sensor-mission assignment in rechargeable wireless sensor networks. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), 10(4).

(2014) Basagni S, Boloni L, Gjanci P, Petrioli C, et al. Maximizing the Value of Sensed Information in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks via an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM. Toronto, Canada.

(2014) Petrioli C, Nati M, Casari P, Zorzi M, Basagni S. ALBA-R: Load-Balancing Geographic Routing Around Connectivity Holes in Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 25(3):529-539.

(2011) La Porta TF, Maselli G, Petrioli G. Anticollision Protocols for Single-Reader RFID Systems: Temporal Analysis and Optimization. IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing, 10(2):267-279.

(2003) Petrioli C, Basagni S Chlamtac I, Configuring BlueStars: Multihop scatternet formation for Bluetooth networks. IEEE Transactions on Computers, Special Issue on Wireless Internet, 52:779-790.

Awards and prizes

Chiara Petrioli won a Fulbright grant in 1996. The work of her research group won the "Best poster" award at IEEE INFOCOM 2013, the "Best demo" award at ACM WINTECH 2013 and the "Best demo" award at ACM WUWNET 2014. GENESI and SUNRISE research projects coordinated by Chiara Petrioli were highlighted as successful cases on the Digital Agenda of Europe website and on the website of the Vice-President of the European Commission. The SUNRISE project was chosen as the testimonial of the campaign of the Italian representation of the European commission EuFactor.

Position/Role

Researcher at the D3 Compunet Department of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa.

Professional career

She graduated in Physical Chemistry in 2014 at the University Federico II of Naples and continued her education with a PhD in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry. Between 2011 and 2014 she has worked at the Centre for Advanced Biomaterials for Health Care of the Italian Institute of Technology, IIT@CRIB. In 2014 she was visiting researcher at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris, France, and at the Institute for Molecular Science of Nagoya, Japan. From 2014 to 2017 she was first researcher and then senior researcher at the Department of Drug Discovery and Development, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia IIT@D3. 

In 2018 she joined the Data Science team at 3RDPLACE | AI models of Datrix group with the role of business analyst. From 2019 to 2021 she was Project Manager of the Digital Marketing team, a team dedicated to Digital Transformation projects. In 2020 she acquired and field-tested Growth Hacking skills for product development in the Digital area.
From 2022 she is AI Project and Customer Relationship Manager in the Model Serving team at 3rdPlace Applied Artificial Intelligence and Research & Development division of DATRIX Group.

Scientific results

Marika Savarese's main areas of interest concern projects aimed at Digital Transformation. They involve the development of Machine Learning algorithms for learning, recognising and categorising data in order to extract knowledge from the data that make up phenomena and processes and to guide decisions; among the most interesting approaches are Natural Process Languages, sentiment analysis, image processing and object character recognition. The main technologies used in the projects I follow are: Cloud Computing (Google Cloud Platform), Python Development, relational and non-relational databases, APIs and Docker.

Editorial work and publications

Marika Savarese is the author of several publications in international journals, including:

Excited State Proton Transfer and Intramolecular Charge Transfer in 1, 3 diketone Molecules: a Density Functional Theory Based investigation. Marika Savarese*, Éric Brémond, Nadia Rega,Carlo Adamo, Ilaria Ciofini, Chem. Phys. Chem., 2016; DOI: 10.1002/cphc.201500908.

Computational Insights into Excited-State Proton-Transfer Reactions in Azo and Azomethine Dyes. Marika Savarese*, Éric Brémond, Ludmil Antonov, Ilaria Ciofini, Carlo Adamo, Chem. Phys.Chem., 2015; 16, 3966.

Modeling of charge transfer Processes to understand photophysical signatures: The case of Rhodamine 110. (Editor's Choice) Marika Savarese*, Umberto Raucci, Carlo Adamo, Paolo Antonio Netti, Ilaria Ciofini, Nadia Rega Chem. Phys. Lett., 2014; 610, 148.

Exploring the limits of recent exchange–correlation functionals in modeling lithium/benzene interaction. Marika Savarese*, Éric Brémond, Carlo Adamo Theo. Chem. Acc., 2016; 145, 1.

Studies on the Enantioselective Iminium Ion Trapping of Radicals Triggered by an Electron-Relay Mechanism. Ana Bahamonde, John J Murphy, Marika Savarese, Éric Brémond, Andrea Cavalli, Paolo Melchiorre, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2017, 139, 4559.

Fluorescence Lifetimes and Quantum Yields of Rhodamine Derivatives: New Insights from Theory and Experiment. Marika Savarese, Anna Aliberti, Ilaria De Santo , Edmondo Battista, Filippo Causa , Paolo Antonio Netti , Nadia Rega J. Phys. Chem., A 2012; 116, 7491

Position/Role

President of the Degree Course and Professor of Computer Science at the “Sapienza” University of Rome.

Professional career

After graduating in Electronic Engineering at the “Sapienza” University of Rome in 1978, she worked as a researcher at the Ugo Bordoni Foundation until 1982. In 1983 she was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and, from 1984 to 1986, was a researcher at the IBM science centre in Rome. From 1986 to 1996 she is associate professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ancona. Since 1996 she is a professor at the Computer Science Department of the S.MM.FF.NN faculty of the “Sapienza” University of Rome. In 2001 she won a first class competition and became a full professor at the same university, where from 2011 to 2013 she was President of the Degree Course in Computer Science, a position she took on again in November 2016. Since 2013 she has been responsible for the Master’s degree course in Computer Science, distance learning. She teaches Machine Learning and Web and Social Information Extraction at the Master’s degree in Computer Science (in English), and from 2017, also the Business Intelligence course in Management Master's Degree taught in English. She is involved in gender issues, and she has been coordinating the NERD orientation project for six years in order to increase the number of girls enrolled in computer courses.

Scientific results

In the first years of scientific activity, Paola Velardi was involved in Computer Architecture and Reliability to then address her studies to Artificial Intelligence. Later, her main research interests concerned natural language processing, machine learning, semantic modeling and semantic web, i.e. the transformation of the web into an environment where published documents are associated with information and data which specify the semantic context in a format suitable for interrogation and interpretation (for example, through search engines) and, more generally, for automatic word processing. More recently, she has been involved in the analysis of social networks, applying her studies to user profiling, the detection of trending topics (topics of discussion that become popular among users of social networks), and the study of female leadership in social networks companies, epidemiological surveillance and e-health.

Editorial work and publications

She is author of over 150 national and international publications, including:

(2021) Aragona D, Podo L, Prenkaj B, Velardi P. CoRoNNa: A Deep Sequential Framework to Predict Epidemic Spread. SAC '21 Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. 3.

(2016) Stilo G, Velardi P. Hashtag Sense Clustering based on Temporal Similarity. Computational Linguistics, 43-1. 

(2016) Stilo G, Velardi P. Efficient Temporal Mining of Micro-blog Texts and its application to Event Discovery. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 30(2):372-402.

(2015) Faralli S, Stilo G, Velardi P. Recommendation of micro-blog users based on hierarchical interest profiles. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 5, 25. 

(2015) Gesualdo F, Stilo G, D’Ambrosio A, Carloni E, Pandolfi E, Velardi P, et al. Can Twitter be a source of information on allergy? Correlation of pollen counts with tweets reporting symptoms of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis and names of antihistamine drugs. PloS One, 10(7):e0133706 

(2015) Faralli S, Stilo G, Velardi P. Large Scale Homophily Analysis in Twitter using a Twixonomy. Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015) Buenos Aires. 

(2015) Faralli S, Stilo G, Velardi P. What Women Like: A Gendered Analysis of Twitter Users' Interests based on a Twixonomy. Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media Workshop: Wikipedia, a Social Pedia: Research Challenges and Opportunities, Oxford. 

(2015) Di Tommaso G, Stilo G, Velardi P. Women leadership in enterprise social networks: A SNA toolkit to foster the emergence of informal leaders in organizations. International Conference on Information Society (i-Society 2015), IEEE, London. 

(2014) P. Velardi P, G. Stilo G, E. Tozzi E, Gesualdo F. Twitter mining for fine-grained syndromic surveillance. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 61(3):153-63. 

(2013) Velardi P, S. Faralli S, Navigli R. OntoLearn Reloaded: A Graph-based Algorithm for Taxonomy Induction. Computational Linguistics, 39(3), MIT Press.

(2013) Gesualdo F, Stilo G, Agricola E, Gonfiantini MV, Pandolfi E, Velardi P, Tozzi AE. Influenza-like illness surveillance on Twitter through automated learning of naïve language. PLoS One, 8(12):e82489.

Awards and prizes

She participated as a partner, associate partner or coordinator in various national and European projects. Among others, the national projects (MIUR law 297) CHAT, on multimodality topics, and LC3, a public-private research laboratory on the topic of communication of cultural knowledge; the SimiTur 2.0 (POR FESR 2007/2013 - CO-RESEARCH) regional projects on the theme of tourism; PARTICIPATE (Research Projects presented by Research Institutes LR 13/2008) on topics of e-collaboration and participatory interfaces in the tourist / cultural field; HomeCare4All (POR FERS Lazio 2007/2013) on issues of public health and multilingual interaction with users; and finally Fiordaliso (POR FERS Lazio 2007/2013) on the topic of analysis of female leadership in corporate social networks. She was a member of the governing committee of the European INTEROP Network of Excellence (2003-2007), on enterprise interoperability issues and the scientific committee of the "EU Virtual Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability", an European research institute legally established in Belgium in 2007. She is a reviewer of the European community, reviewer and member of the most important conferences and journals on the topics of interest (ACL, EACL, EMNLP, ESWC, IJCAI, ICWSM, TKDD, TKDE, CL, AIIM, BIBM, WWW, etc.). She is Associate Editor of Knowledge and Information Systems.