(Very) Short Bio
Education
May 2007 PhD in Computer Science from University College London.
December 2002 Laurea in Electronic Engineering (~ British MSci in Electronic Engineering) from the University of Bologna.
Current Positions
September 2020-now Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science at University College London.
October 2019-now Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Bologna.
Previous Research&Teaching Positions
April 2020-March 2021 Visiting Faculty Researcher (Staff Research Scientist) at Google.
October 2019-August 2020 Professor of Data Science at the Department of Geography at University College London.
October 2016-September 2022 Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (Turing University Lead for UCL from April 2019 to September 2022).
June 2015-September 2019 Reader in Data Science at the Department of Geography at University College London.
March 2014-May 2015 Reader at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham.
September 2011-February 2014 Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham.
November 2009-August 2011 SICSA Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews.
September 2008-October 2009 Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
September 2007-August 2008 ISTS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College.
October 2005-August 2007 Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science at University College London.
June 2003-September 2003 Intern at INRIA Rocquencourt.
Short Bio
I received a PhD in Computer Science from University College London in May 2007 and a Laurea in Electronic Engineering (roughly comparable to a British MSci in Electronic Engineering) from the University of Bologna in December 2002. I prepared my Final Year Dissertation from June to December 2002 at the Department of Computer Science at University College London, working as research assistant as part of the XMIDDLE project.
After receiving my Master degree, I spent a period in industry working as software engineer at E-Tree and at Kion. During summer 2003 I also did an internship at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), the National French Research Institute in Computer Science and Automation, at Rocquencourt, near Paris, in the Arles group headed by Dr. Valerie Issarny.
Then, in October 2003 I went back to London where I started my PhD at University College London under the supervision of Prof. Cecilia Mascolo. In October 2005 I became a Research Fellow involved in the CREAM project. I held this position until August 2007.
From September 2007 to August 2008 I was an ISTS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA, where I was a member of the Sensor Networks Group, headed by Prof. Andrew T. Campbell working in the MetroSense Project. Then from September 2008 to October 2009 I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
From November 2009 to August 2011 I was a SICSA Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
I moved to the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham as Senior Lecturer in September 2011. I was promoted to Reader in March 2014.
I joined the Department of Geography at University College London as Reader in Data Science in June 2015. I was promoted to Full Professor in October 2019. I moved to the UCL Department of Computer Science in September 2020 as Professor of Computer Science.
Since October 2019, I also hold a position as Full Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Bologna.
Awards (in Reverse Chronological Order)
- 2024 ACM UbiComp 10-Year Impact Award - Runner Up for our paper “InterruptMe: Designing Intelligent Prompting Mechanisms for Pervasive Applications”.
- Best Paper Award at CANS 2024 for our paper “MarcoPolo: A Zero-Permission Attack for Location Type Inference from the Magnetic Field Using Mobile Devices”.
- 2020 ACM UbiComp 10-Year Impact Award for our paper “EmotionSense: A Mobile Phones based Adaptive Platform for Experimental Social Psychology Research”.
- 2019 ACM SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time Award for our paper “Sensing Meets Mobile Social Networks: The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of the CenceMe Application”.
- Best Paper Award at ACM CHIIR’19 for the paper “NotifyMeHere: Intelligent Notification Delivery in Multi-Device Environments”.
- SenSys Test-of-Time Award at ACM SenSys 2018 for our paper “Sensing Meets Mobile Social Networks: The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of the CenceMe Application” (presented at SenSys 2008).
- Best Paper Award at UbiComp 2016 for our paper “PrefMiner: Mining User’s Preferences for Intelligent Mobile Notification Management”. The paper has has been listed in the ACM Best of Computing Notable Books and Articles for 2016.
- Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (April 2015). Declined for change of institution.
- Data for Development (D4D) Challenge 2013 Best Overall Prize with our submission “Exploiting Cellular Data for Disease Containment and Information Campaigns Strategies in Country-wide Epidemics”. More details about the D4D event at NetMob’13 can be found here (see also the United Nations Global Pulse website). Our work was also covered by the Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, La Repubblica, and Mobile World Live.
- Nokia Mobile Data Open Challenge (2012) winner with our submission “Interdependence and Predictability of Human Mobility and Social Interactions”. A report of the event can be found here. An extended journal version which appeared on Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing can be found here. A website of the project is available here.
- NetExplorateur/UNESCO Award - Top 100 Innovations of the Year (2011) for our EmotionSense project.
Academic and Professional Affiliations
- Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS) and Member of the BCS Academy of Computing.
- Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) - my ACM Author Profile page can be found here.
- Member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
Talks and Invited Lectures
A list of my talks and invited lectures can be found here.
Personal
On a more personal note, I am originally from the beautiful city of Bologna, Italy.
A list of things I like:
- Good books (almost everything, from novels to non-fiction books);
- Related to the above, libraries and bookshops (technically a bibliophile, I guess);
- Running: I am into long-distance (slow) runs. I ran 9 marathons (Paris 2009, Venice 2009, London 2012 [in case you were wondering, not the Olympic one], Paris 2013, Edinburgh 2014, Florence 2014, Paris 2016, Florence 2019 and Bologna 2021) and 2 trail ultramarathon (Tiree 2019 and Tiree 2023);
- History of computing and everything related to it: I collect old computing books, if you have an old Algol manual that you are going to throw away, please contact me!;
- Philosophy (in particular Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science and Ethics).
Last updated: 19 January 2025.