Research

Interests

  • Research area 1: Databases, conceptual modeling, data integration, knowledge management.
  • Research area 2: Bioinformatics, human genomics, viral genomics, integrative data analysis.
  • Research area 3: Data science, data mining, big data analysis, natural language processing.

Ongoing research collaborations

I will co-chair the “FAIRification of Genomic Annotations” RDA Working Group, aiming at the standardization of Genomic Annotations and FAIRification of related (meta)data and processing pipelines

Reactive Knowledge Management in the context of Property Graphs (collaboration with Banca d’Italia)

Conceptual Modeling of Systemic Design principles (collaboration with Dr Chiara Leonardi)

Health datasets FAIRification and preprocessing (see BETTER Horizon Europe Project)

Data-driven Genomic Surveillance for viral pathogens (see SENSIBLE Project), working with Prof. Matteo Chiara (University of Milan) and Prof. Ilaria Capua (Johns Hopkins University)

Search systems for Property Graphs and Text Representation (see TETYS Project)

Past research collaborations

I collaborated with the Bioinformatics group of the Institute of Systems Analysis and Computer Science Antonio Ruberti of the Italian National Research Council (IASI – CNR) and Università degli Studi Roma Tre for a study on data integration from the biggest repository of open cancer genomics data (Genomic Data Commons). We realized a system that allows to import and transform such data, by enriching it with annotations and identifiers useful for integration with other sources. OpenGDC can be found at http://geco.deib.polimi.it/opengdc/.

I collaborated with the group of Prof. Mario Cannataro (University “Magna Græcia” di Catanzaro) for an application of the GenoMetric Query Language to computations that combine both public and private datasets.

I organized the first four editions of the Workshop on Conceptual Modeling for Life Sciences (http://www.bioinformatics.deib.polimi.it/cmls2023/) in conjunction with the International Conference of Conceptual Modeling ER 2023 and the first two editions of the Workshop on Web Applications for Life Sciences (http://www.bioinformatics.deib.polimi.it/wals2023) in conkunction with the International Conference of Web Engineering ICWE 2023.

We collaborated with Prof. Ilaria Capua (first at One Health Center of Excellence, Gainesville, Florida, now at Johns Hopkins University) to 1) understand the requirements of virologists using software to search and analysis viral sequences; and 2) understand the mechanisms of viral reassortment (with a focus on the influenza virus).

I collaborated with the group of Prof. Wolfgang Nejdl at Leibniz University of Hannover on genomic data protection.

In collaboration with Prof. Silvia Grandi I investigated characteristics of COVID-19 communication, based on IT platforms, dashboards, and Geographical Information Systems.

I worked with Dr. Claudio Menghi, Prof. Paola Spoletini, Prof. Carlo Ghezzi, and Prof. Lenore D. Zuck on formalizing techniques for combining model checking and theorem proving for partially specified systems, particularly working on Linear Temporal Logic properties.