About me

I am a senior Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy and a member of the SWAP research group, where I work on cutting-edge research in Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and Recommender Systems. From 2014 to 2017, I pursued my Ph.D. studies, culminating in the successful defense of my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Mathematics in April 2018. My doctoral thesis, titled "An affect-aware computational model for supporting decision-making through recommender systems", showcased my expertise and innovative thinking in machine learning–driven recommendation.

I have served as a program committee member for several leading international conferences, including IJCAI, ECAI, IUI, AIVR, RecSys, UMAP, CIKM, SIGIR and WWW, reflecting my commitment to advancing research and fostering collaboration among esteemed colleagues. I have also played key roles in organizing major scientific events. I was an organizing committee member for the AI*IA 2017 conference and co-organizer of the EVALITA 2018 ABSITA challenge on aspect-based sentiment analysis. More recently, I helped organize successful editions of EVALITA 2023, NL4AI 2022/23, ACM RecSys IntRS 2022-20246, and the ACM UMAP 2020-26 ExUM Workshops, with a strong focus on user modeling, content personalization, and semantic representation. I have also supported the community as a co-chair for ACL 2022, EVALITA 2023, EACL 2024, EMNLP 2024, CLiC-it 2025, ACM RecSys 2025, EACL 2026 and 2027 .

My expertise is further recognized through my activity as an official reviewer for numerous international journals, consolidating my reputation in NLP and Recommender Systems. I currently serve on the Reviewer Editorial Board of more than 35 international Computer Science journals, including Information Processing and Management (Elsevier), Expert Systems with Applications (Elsevier), and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE Press). Notably, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (MSCA-RISE) fellow from 2016 to 2018, as part of Project No. 691071, "Seo-Dwarf: Semantic EO Data Web Alert and Retrieval Framework", where I contributed to pioneering research on semantic technologies and intelligent data access.

My research interests span Information Filtering, Recommender Systems, Natural Language Processing, and Cognitive Computing. Over the years, I have developed solid expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining, particularly in large-scale and big data scenarios. As an AI researcher and academic, I remain strongly committed to innovation, rigorous experimentation, and the development of intelligent systems that enhance user experience and support effective decision-making.

What i'm doing

  • AI Cutting-Edge Models

    LLMs and Agentic AI Models

    I am currently active in the implementation of state of the art AI models, Agentic AI, LLMs in the field of NLP, GenAI and Recommender Systems.

  • Symbiotic AI

    Symbiotic AI

    I work on innovative topics that aim to create AI models that are centered on human-machine symbiosis.

  • Holistic User Modeling

    Holistic User Modeling

    In several research projects I am focusing on holistic user profiling approaches.

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    Multimodal, Multisource, Multiperspective Data Sources

    I am actively on the possibility of dealing with different types of data sources to make the AI models versatile and robust.

Resume

Education

  1. Ph.D. in Computer Science and Mathematics

    2014 - 2017 (Ph.D. Defence April 2018)

    Doctoral thesis titled "An affect-aware computational model for supporting decision-making through recommender systems".

  2. Laurea Degree in Computer Science (summa cum Laude)

    2008 — 2013

Work Experience

  1. Assistant Professor- RTT (SSD INF/01 - Computer Science)

    December 2020 — Present

    Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Dipartimento di Informatica
    ▪ Research topics: GenAI, AgenticAI, LLMs, Natural Language Processing, Recommender Systems, Data Mining

  2. Post-doctoral Research Fellow (SSD INF/01 - Computer Science)

    Jan 2018 — Dec 2020

    Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Dipartimento di Informatica ▪ Research topics: Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Recommender Systems, Data Mining, Data Science

  3. Research Fellow (Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions)

    Mar 2016 - Jul 2016, Oct 2018 - Nov 2018, Apr 2019

    Planetek Hellas, Marousi, Athens, Greece ▪ Research topics: Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation



VISITING EXPERIENCE



FELLOWSHIP

Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE action Horizon 2020: SEO-DWARF (Semantic EO Data Web Alert and Retrieval Framework) project n° 691071. The research period at the foreign institution was held in Athens, Greece at the Planetek Hellas Research Center, Athens, Greece supervised by the coordinator of research activities Stelios Bollanos. The period was held from 01/03/2016 to 31/07/2016. A second secondment, in the same location, was held from 25/10/2018 to 09/11/2018 and from 02/04/2019 to 15/04/2019. For a total of 6 months of which 5 were continuous.


INVITED TALKS

  • SCAI'21, SCAI: Search-Oriented Conversational AI workshop. Invited speaker to present the research work pursued in the area of conversational and recommender systems. "MyrrorBot: A Digital Assistant Based on Holistic User Models for Personalized Access to Online Services TOIS 21"
  • CREA - Council for Research in Agriculture and Agricultural Economics of the Ministry of the Italian Republic 20/10/2023. TITLE: “Deep Learning and Sentiment Analysis Approaches on Social Contents”
  • Workshop in Quantitative Finance the 25th and 26th of May 2023, University of Bologna, Italy. TITLE: “Information Extraction for Economics”
  • RecSys Summer School 2023, Supported by ACM RecSys, ACM Europe Council, DDSA, and SIGCHI, June 12-16, 2023, Copenhagen, DK. TITLE: “Knowledge-based recommendation thrugh ClayRS”
  • RecSys Summer School 2024, Supported by ACM RecSys, SIGCHI, ACM Europe, EURAI, and University of Cagliari, October 8-12 2024, Bari, Italy. TITLE: “Large Language Models in Recommender Systems”
  • AILC Lectures on Computational Linguistics 2024, 19-21 June 2024, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy. TITLE: “Hands-on Large Language Models”
  • Computer Science Workshop 2024, 9-10 September 2024, DIBRIS department, University of Genoa. TITLE: “Large Language Models: The Italian Perspective”
  • HCAI Symposium 2024 4-5 November 2024, Otto von Guericke University,Magdeburg, Germany. TITLE: “Large Language Models meet Human-Computer Interaction: The Large Agentic Models perspective”
  • DMIF - Dipartimento di Scienze Matematiche, Informatiche e Fisiche, 29 November 2024, Università di Udine, Italia. TITLE: “Large Language Models in Recommender Systems”
  • Unict - Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, 12 December 2024, Università di Catania, Italia. TITLE: “The long journey to Large Language Models: The NLP breakthrough”
  • DELTA Lab - The Department of Industrial Engineering, 16 January 2025, Tel-Aviv University, Israel TITLE: “LLMs meet Recommender Systems: An overview”
  • Department of Electrical and Information Engineering - University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, 4 April 2025, Italy TITLE: “The Italian Challenge in Large Language Models, LLaMAntino, Personalization, and Counteracting Biases and Cyberviolence”


EDITORIAL ACTIVITY

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Editorial Board:


Reviewer Board:

  • More than 35 reviews for volumes and international High-Quality Journals including Elsevier, Springer, IEEE, Wiley


SUPERVISION

  • Scientific Supervisor of one Research Assistant at the Department of Computer Science, University of Bari Aldo Moro, starting in August 2023 ending in 2024
  • Evaluation Committee of one Ph.D. Student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Bari Aldo Moro, XXXIX Cycle, starting 2023-2024
  • Co-Supervisor of one Ph.D. Student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Bari Aldo Moro, XL Cycle, starting 2024-2025
  • Evaluation Committee of two Ph.D. Student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, defense in 2024
  • Evaluation Committee of two Ph.D. Student at the Department of Informatik, OVGU - Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, defense in 2026
  • Supervisor of more than 50 bachelor's theses and 35 master's theses


TEACHING

  • "Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing". 3 ECTS credits, doctorate in Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Bari, a.y. 2021/2022
  • "Deep Learning for Content Representation in Recommender Systems". 3 ECTS credits, Doctorate in Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Bari, a.y. 2022/2023
  • "Human-Centered Natural Language Processing ". 3 ECTS credits, Doctorate in Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Bari, a.y. 2024/2025
  • "UMAP 2022/2023, ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization. Tutorial about: “Semantics-aware Content Representations for Reproducible Recommender Systems (SCoRe)”
  • "Formal Languages and Compilers. University of Bari Aldo Moro, 2024-2026”


PROJECTS

  • Dec 2023 – Dec 2026 FAIR: Future Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) Foundation – FC 93098910503 - Spoke 6 - Symbiotic AI, Lead of the Task 2.4, "Preference Modeling" of the TP2 - Vision, Language and Multimodal Challenges
  • Jan 2021 - Dec 2023 HELENA: An Intelligent Dialog Assistant for Remote Patient Monitoring. “Research for Innovation (REFIN)” POR Puglia 2014/2020 – Asse X – Azione 10.4. Research for Innovation – REFIN 10AC8FB6.
  • Jan 2020 - Apr 2020 E-SHELF: electronic shopping & home delivery of edible goods with low environmental footprint. POR Puglia FESR 2014-2020 – Azione 1.6 bando INNONETWORK “sostegno alle attività di R&S per lo sviluppo di nuove tecnologie sostenibili, di nuovi prodotti e servizi”
  • Jan 2018 - Dec 2018 DECiSION: data-driven customer service innovation. INNONETWORK – Aiuti a sostegno alle Attività di R&S BQS5153 – DECISION - DATA-DRIVEN CUSTOMER SERVICE INNOVATION.
  • Jan 2015 - Dec 2016 Digital Services Ecosystem DSE: PON03PE_00136_1, ICT/Tecnologie per Smart Communities.
  • Jan 2014 - Dec 2014 MAIVISTO Massive Adaptive Internet VIdeo STreaming using the clOud - Bando Startup MIUR 2014/2015 (D.D 436 del 13 Marzo 2013).
  • Jan 2014 – Dec 2014 ParsEco: Recommender systems and backoffice for Web Portal realized to increase the recycle of used domestic oils, "Apulian ICT Living Labs" P.O. FESR PUGLIA 2007-2013 - Asse I - Linea di Intervento 1.4 - Azione 1.4.2. - A.D. n. 307 del 31.07.2012.
  • Jan 2013 – Dec 2013 HealthNet: Recommender system and backoffice for HealthNet (The Health Social network), "Apulian ICT Living Labs" P.O. FESR PUGLIA 2007-2013 - Asse I - Linea di Intervento 1.4 - Azione 1.4.2. - A.D. n. 307 del 31.07.2012.

Project reviewer

  • Expert evaluator for the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
  • Expert evaluator for the Israel Science Foundation (ISF)
  • Expert evaluator for the Open Research Europe (F1000)
  • Expert evaluator for European Commission: "Advancing Large AI Models: Integration of New Data Modalities and Expansion of Capabilities (AI, Data and Robotics Partnership) (RIA) HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01"
  • Expert evaluator for European Commission: UTTER-101070631-PMON-101070631-2, 4M€ fundings, October 2025. (AI, LLMs)
  • Expert evaluator for European Commission: "Leveraging artificial intelligence for eHealth" (AI, eHealth), 20M€ fundings, December 2025 (HaDEA) HORIZON-HLTH-2025-01–01


COMMUNITY SERVICE

General Chair:

  • CLiC-it 2025 11th AILC Conference on Computational Linguistics, Cagliari, Italy

Co-chair:

  • ACL 2022 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
  • EVALITA 2023 Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian 2023
  • EACL 2024-2025-2026 The 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics
  • EMNLP 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
  • RecSys 2024-2025 The 18th ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems

Workshop Co-Chair:

  • ABSITA 2018 - ATE_ABSITA 2020 Aspect Term Extraction and Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis Task co-located event of the 7th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics - CLiC-it 2020
  • ExUm International Workshop on Transparent Personalization Methods based on Heterogeneous Personal Data at the ACM International Conference On User Modelling, Adaptation And Personalization: ‘19-’26
  • IntRS Workshop on Interfaces and Human Decision Making for Recommender Systems at the ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems: '22-'26
  • NL4AI Workshop on Natural Language for Artificial Intelligence (NL4AI, 6th-7th edition) Co-located at the International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial intelligence: '22-'23
  • XAI.IT Workshop on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI.IT) Co-located with the International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial intelligence: '24-'26

TPC member of some of the most relevant scientific conferences

  • IUI 2017-2018-2024, International Intelligent User Interface conference - GRIN-GII A
  • UMAP 2018/2022/2023/2024/2025, User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization conference - GRIN-GII B
  • IJCAI 2020, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence - GRIN-GII A++
  • ECAI 2020, European Conference on Artificial Intelligence - GRIN-GII A-
  • RecSys 2020-2022-2023-2024, Conference on Recommender Systems - GRIN-GII A
  • TheWebConf 2022/2023/2025 (WWW), International World Wide Web Conference - GRIN-GII A++
  • Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI 2023, GRIN-GII A++
  • ACL 2023, Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics - GRIN-GII A ++
  • SIGIR 2023/2025, Annual Conference of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Information Retrieval, - GRIN-GII A ++
  • EACL 2024/2025/2026, The 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, - GRIN-GII A +
  • ECIR 2024/2025, The European Conference on Information Retrieval - GRIN-GII A -


Technological transfer

Founding Partner of Asteria S.r.l. The company launched in 2020 through the regional public funding Pugliesi Innovativi (PIN - Initiative financed with resources from the Fund for Development and Cohesion and the 2014/2020 Puglia OP) is concerned with establishing strong collaborations with regional and national industry areas in order to transfer university KNOW-HOW into the industrial world. The topics covered by the company cover those high-tech solutions based on Artificial Intelligence applied to Conversational Agents, Recommender Systems, and Natural Language Processing.


Memberships

  • ACM - Association for Computing Machinery
  • IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  • AILC - Italian Association of Computational Linguistics
  • AixiA - Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence

Portfolio