My interests are in:
Knowledge Representation
Databases
Data Access and Integration
Description and Modal Logics
Ontologies
Conceptual Modelling
Computational Logics
Digital humanities
Open Data for public policies
My research activity focuses on knowledge representation and conceptual modelling for data management. I'm interested in the theoretical and methodological aspects behind the creation of ontology-based data management solutions. Multi-format data integration and access, efficient ontology-based query answering, formal semantics of conceptual modelling languages, temporal and multidimensional data representation, SPARQL querying support systems, data exploration techniques for non-technical users are among the topics I work on.
I contribute to the design of applications that get fed by (open and legacy) data in the so-called Research and Innovation ecosystem. The Open Data platform called UNiCS is one of the result of my attempt to apply the ontology-based approach for semantic data integration in a real application scenario (the ontology I've developed for this project has been rephactored and it is now part of the OntoPia ontology repository by the Italian Digital Agency). The Toscana Open Research, Regional Research and Innovation Observatory is another living example alogn this line.
My research career has been always characterised by a strong degree of interdisciplinarity: I like to build linguistic and conceptual bridges between different disciplines. This attitude gave me the opportunity to directly work with domain knowledge corpora by chemical engineers, Roman Empire historians, policy makers, mechanical artefact designers, among others. The idea of using the principles and technologies of Knowledge Representation to allow the cross-domain interchange of meanings is surely one of the most relevant driving engine of my research activity.
Here's a list of basic and applied research projects I've been, or I'm currently, involved in (last ten years).
Besides them, e-MedMACU is a "proto-project" I'm very proud of, even if it never took off: it's a proposal for an EU Marie Curie Fellowship that I withdrawn after being accepted for granting under the FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IEF programme.
2024-today Co-investigator in the CYCLOPS - Automated end-to-end data life cycle management for FAIR data integration processing and re-use research project, funded under the HORIZON.2.4.5 - Artificial Intelligence and Robotics programme of the Europena Commission (Grant agreement ID: 101135513).
2022-2024 Principal investigator in the CRISP Phase 2 and Phase 3 - Climate Risk Planning & Managing Tool for Development Programmes in the Agriculture & Food Sector research project, funded by GIZ (German Development Cooperation), done in collaboration with the EURAC Research Institute for Earth Observation and the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
2021-2022 Principal investigator in the CRISP - Climate Risk Planning & Managing Tool for Development Programmes in the Agriculture & Food Sector research project, funded by GIZ (German Development Cooperation), done in collaboration with the EURAC Research Institute for Earth Observation and the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
2019-2022 Co-investigator in the INODE - Intelligent Open Data Exploration research project, funded under the H2020-EU.1.4.1.3. - Development, deployment and operation of ICT-based e-infrastructures programme of the Europena Commission.
2020-2022 Co-investigator in the MENS - Medieval Explorations in Neuro-Science (1050–1450): Ontology-Based Keyword Spotting in Manuscript Scans research project, funded under the "4th call for Research" of the Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano (Italy).
2018-2019 Investigator in the Razonamiento automatico, ejecucion de modelos y analisis de datos a partir de ontologias (REMEDIAL) research project, funded by the Spanish State Research Agency - Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.
2017-2019 Supervisor of the OKHAERS: Ontology-based Knowledge Access for the higher education and research sector applied research project, funded under H2020-EU.2.3.2.2. - Enhancing the innovation capacity of SMEs.
2016-2019 Co-invesigator in the Desarrollo de un sistema de integración semántica de fuentes de datos relacionales y RDF (SISDe) research project, funded by the Spanish Torres Quevedo Grant PTQ-15-07419, Industrial Research/Technology Transfer, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
2016-2019 Coordinator of the University Analytics (UNiCS) project, funded by the Open Data Incubator for Europe - ODINE.
2015-2018 Co-invesigator in the Análisis y caracterización de los patrones de interacción en la producción de conocimiento research project, funded by the Spanish Torres Quevedo Grant PTQ-14-06718, Industrial Research/Technology Transfer, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
2014-Today Investigator in the ORMIE project, studying and developing a reasoning plugin for NORMA (Natural ORM Architect for Visual Studio).
2014-2017 Invesigator in the ELASTIC: especificación y verificación de modelos para los procesos de servitización de las TIC research project, funded by funded by the Spanish State Research Agency - Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.
2013-2017 Investigator in the Caracterizacion y modelizacion de los procesos tecnologicos en la fabricacion ceramica de sociedades antiguas de asia central. del helenismo al islam (CAMOTTECER) research project, funded by the Spanish State Research Agency - Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.
2014-2019 Investigator in the EPNET - Production and distribution of food during the Roman Empire: Economics and political dynamics funded under FP7-IDEAS-ERC, ERC-AG-SH6 - ERC Advanced Grant - The study of the human past, 340828.
2012-2013 Co-investigator in the Business Process Engineering (BPE) applied research project, funded by CNR-IST - Italian National Research Council.
2009-2011 University's coordinator for the ONTORULE: ONTOlogies meet business RULEs project, funded under FP7/2009-2011, Grant Agreement 231875.
Activities I carried out in favour of our scientific community and research institutions. Among them, you can find specific items pointing to research group coordination, PC membership and review activity, organisation of scientific events and of events contributing to the public understanding of science .
Co-chair of the International Workshop on Semantic Technologies for Data Management (ST4DM), co-located with the 14th International Conference On Formal Ontology In Information Systems (FOIS 2024), 15-19 July 2024 (Enschede, Netherlands).
Member of the Program Committee of the 16th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (KEOD), held in conjunction with ICINCO 2024, WEBIST 2024 and CoopIS 2024, 17 - 19 November, 2024 (Porto, Portugal).
Member of the Program Committee of the 24th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 26-28, 2024.
Editor of the Special Issue on “Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage” (https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3626254), ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 16(3): 1-5 (2023), ACM.
Co-chair and proceedings editor of the International Workshop on Semantic Web and Ontology for Cultural Heritage (SWODCH), 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
Member of the Program Committee of the 21st International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) (2022 (October, 23-27, Hangzhou, China), 2023 (November, 6-10, Athens, Greece), .
Member of the Program Committee of the 23rd International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW), 2022 (September 26–29, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy), 2024 (Amsterdam Science Park campus, November 26-28, Netherlands).
Member of the Editorial Board of Applied Ontology, ISSN print 1570-5838, ISSN online 1875-8533, IOS Press. Editors-in-Chief: Roberta Ferrario (Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Italy); Michael Gruninger (University of Toronto, Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Canada). Since January 2022.
Member of the Program Committee of the Symposium on Open Data and Knowledge for a Post-Pandemic Era (ODAK 2022), 2022.
Reviewer for the Journal of Data Technologies and Applications, Editor-in-Chief: Miguel-Angel Sicilia, Emerald Publishing, ISSN: 2514-9288, 2021.
Reviewer for the Drug Discovery Today journal, Editor-in-Chief: Stephen Carney, Elsevier, ISSN: 1359-6446, 2021.
Member of the Program Committee of the 22nd International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2020), 16-18 September 16-18, 2020, Bozen-Bolzano (Italy).
Member of the Guest Editorial Board of the Special Issue on Cultural Heritage and Semantic Weba> by the Semantic Web journal (SWJ), IOS Press. Guest Editors: Mehwish Alam (FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, Germany), Victor de Boer (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Enrico Daga (The Open University, United Kingdom), Marieke van Erp (KNAW Humanities Cluster, the Netherlands), Eero Hyvönen (University of Helsinki, Aalto University, Finland), Albert Meroño Peñuela (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Harald Sack (FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, Germany), April 2020.
Chair of the 2nd International Workshop on Data meets Applied Ontologies in Open Science and Innovation (DAO-SI), co-located with the 2019 edition of the Joint Ontology Workshops - Episode V: The Styrian Autumn of Ontology (JOWO), Graz (Austria).
Member of the Program Committee of the 1st International Workshop on Ontologies for Digital Humanities and their Social Analysis (WODHSA), 2019.
Member of the Program Committee of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2018), co-located with the 15th European Semantic Web Conference, 3rd-7th June, Heraklion, Crete (Greece).
Member of the Program Committee of the workshop Ontology-based data access (OBDA) for classical archaeological and historical data: the EPNET experience", 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology (Cologne/Bonn, Germany, 22-26 May 2018).
Co-chair and proceedings editor of the International Workshop on Semantic Web for Cultural Heritage (SW4CH), , Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 3-7, 2018; (member of the Program Committee for the 2015 (Futuroscope, France, September 8-11) and 2017 (Nicosia, Cyprus, September 24-27) editions).
Member of the Program Committee of the Workshop on Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms (ASPOC), 2012–today.
Referee of the journal Scienze e Ricerche, ISSN 2283-5873, 2014–today.
Reviewer for the Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE C - Computer & Electronics, Editor-in-Chief: Yunhe Pan, Springer Berlin Heidelberg (2013–2015).
Reviewer for the 19th International Conferences on Logic for Programming Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning (LPAR), 15th-19th December 2013, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Reviewer for the 26th International Workshop on Description Logics, July 23–26, 2013 Ulm, Germany.
Member of the Program Committee of the 24-esimo Convegno Italiano di Logica Computazionale (CILC-09), annual congress of the Italian Association for Logic Programming, June 25-26, 2009, Department of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Italy.
Co-chair for the workshop Intelligent Agents and Services for Smart Environments, hosted by the Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB 2008), April 1-4, 2008, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Member of the Organising Committee for the First Workshop on Game Theory, March 7-8, 2008, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economics, Psychology and Social Sciences (CISEPS), University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Member of the Organising Committee for the workshop From the technological Transfer to the Multidisciplinary Research: Towards a new computational approach to Archaeology, March 8, 2007, Department of History and Cultures (DISCI), University of Bologna, Italy.
Member of the Organising Committee for the Second Workshop on Ontology, Conceptualizations and Epistemology for Software and Systems Engineering (ONTOSE 2008), June 2007, Department of Computer Science, Systems and Communication, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Member of the Organising Committee for the IX Congress of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, September 20-23, 2005, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Member of the Organising Committee for the workshop Knowledge Management: The Role, Contributions And Perspectives Of Artificial Intelligence, Working Group on Artificial Intelligence in Companies, Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA), November 29-30, 2001, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Member of the Organising Committee for the workshop Competitive Innovation And Knowledge Management: Representation And Sharing of Added-value Competencies, Working Group on Artificial Intelligence in Companies, Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA), November 20-21, 2002, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Invited webinar for the CGIAR - Ontologies Community of Practice organisation: "The Virtual Knowledge Graph approach to data access and data integration: An introductory journey" (available recording), January 21, 2022.
Invited speaker at the ENCODE - Bridging the < gap > in Ancient Writing Cultures: ENhance COmpetences in the Digital Era project conference event: Bridging the Gap with Linked Open Data, May 25, 2021.
Invited speaker at the final event of the ODEON: Open Data for European Open iNnovation project (ICT-15-2014 - Big data and Open Data Innovation and take-up, ID:644683), December 17, 2020.
Keynote speaker at the Fair Heritage: Digital Methods, Scholarly Editing and Tools for Cultural and Natural Heritage international conference, LE STUDIUM Loire Valley Institute for Advanced Studies, June 16-17, 2020.
Invited speaker at the Gli Open Data: un’occasione per fare impresa!. Public event organised by Camera di Commercio di Padova, Regione del Veneto, and Unioncamere Veneto, April 20, 2020.
Invited seminar at the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birkbeck College, June 2018.
Keynote speaker at the JIRC: Journée Informatique de Région Centre, Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale et Appliquée de Tours, Polytech'Tours, November 2018.
Invited lecture at the Professional License QSSI (Quality and security of Information systems) master degree of the Computer Department, François Rabelais University, November 2018.
Invited panellist at the The EOSC Stakeholder Forum, in Shape the future EOSC, Brussels, November 2017.
Keynote speaker at the The Joint Ontology Workshops 2017 Episode 3: The Tyrolean Autumn of Ontology (JOWO 2017), September 2017.
Coordinator of the Research & Development division (SIRIS Lab) of SIRIS Academic SL, 2014-2019.
Member of the Spanish node of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), 2014-today.
PhD Committee Member at the Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy), 2009-2010.
Study Plan Advisor for the Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy), 2010-2014.