Research Activity
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list of publications
current research interests
curriculum
During the first years of activity research focussed on Machine Learning topics
and in particular: design and development of neural network learning algorithms,
development of an algorithm for learning symbolic mutually-dependant relations,
synthesis and refinement of control functions, reinforcement learning, integration
of different techniques.
CURRENT ACTIVITY
Reasoning and adaptation
After the year 2000 the activity in the Machine Learning field decreased
and was substituted by new interests related to forms of adaptation obtained
by applying inferencing techniques. In the beginning, the work focussed
on the design of a virtual computer seller, accessible via the web, and able
to assist a user who wanted to assemble a PC with the aim of a specific use.
The main application, however, consisted in the development of a virtual tutor
that supports university students in the creation of personalized curricula;
the system can also verify the correctness of curricula proposed by the students,
explaining them possible mistakes. The mentioned systems are examples of
applications in which the user model is not sufficient to achieve adaptation,
which can be obtained only by reasoning on the user's intentions and goals.
In these works different reasoning techniques have been exploited: procedural
planning, temporal projection, and temporal explanation. All the systems
have been implemented as agents that could accomplish the described tasks.
The main publications describing these works are
[6]
and [7];
other information can be retrieved by following this
link.
Reasoning and interaction protocols
The most recent activity concerns the study of forms of adaptation and personalization
based on reasoning about agent (in a broad sens) interaction protocols.
The current context is given by the emerging area of web services. Both the personalization
of the use of a web service and web service automatic composition can benefit from
the application of reasoning about the communicative behavior of a resource.
The main publications describing the results achieved are
[8]
and [9].
Acquisition of spatial maps for autonomous agents
Aside I have also been interested in the acquisition and manipulation of spatial maps,
executed by autonomous agents that can explore their environment. Currently maps
are bidimensional and agents are only simulated. The technique consists in exploiting
neural networks with a dynamic topology, mainly Growing Neural Gas networks, that
can discretize a continuous input space.
The main ideas have been described in [10].
Duties
2006: member of the program committee of DALT 2006,
AAMAS-06 Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies
( link)
2005: member of the technical program committee of the International Journal of
Lateral-Computing ( IJLC)
2004-today: member of the VI framework NoE REWERSE
( link)
2004: member of the scientific commettee of the Aussois International Summer School
about Semantic Web
2004: member of the organizing commettee of WOA 2004, Workshop form
Objects to Agents
2004: member of the program committee of ICWI2004,
IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2004
2004: member of the program committee of WCLC2004,
World Congress on Lateral Computing 2004
2005: member of the program committee of ICWI2005,
IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet
( link)
2005: member of the program committee of WCLC2005,
World Congress on Lateral Computing 2005
( link)
2005: member of the program committee of WEBIST2005,
International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies
( link)
2005: member of the program committee of PerSWeb'05,
Workshop on Personalization on the Semantic Web, held at the
Int. Conf. on User Modelling
( link)
2005: member of the program committee of SW-EL'05,
Application of Semantic Web Technologies for E-Learning, help at AIED 2005,
Int. Conf. on Artificial Itelligence for Education
( link)
CURRICULUM
1992 |
Part-time job at
CSELT (Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecomunicazioni), Torino, where I designed
and implemented a single-epoch learning algorithm for RCE neural
networks (Restricted Coulomb Energy).
Afterwards, I have integrated the obtained system with Hidden Markov
Models. The developed software has been applied to the classification of utterences of
the ten digits.
In parallel, cooperation with prof. Attilio Giordana, Computer Science Dept.
of the University of Torino, to the development of a method for learning mututally
recursive (symbolic) relations.
|
1993 |
With the beginning of the Ph.D. studies, I joined the ESPRIT project
B-Learn II, aimed at studying the use of Artificial Intelligence
(in particular, Machine Learning) techniques to the automatic synthesis
of artificial agents controllers. I took care of learnt controllers refinement
by means of Reinforcement Learning.
Implementation of system RTL (Recursive Theory Learner) for learning
mututally recursive relations.
|
1994 |
Guest at the Department of
Mechanical Engeneering at the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, (partner in the B-Learn
II project) in february, march and september.
From april through june, guest of the Adaptive Networks group at the
University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA, USA), directed by prof. Andy Barto.
Here I developed the Shaping algorithm, that allows to bias the learning-by-interaction
with the environmente process of an artificial agent by using a feedback produced by
a qualitative (non-operational) knowledge of the world and of the task to be learned.
Machine Learning Summer School in Dourdan, France.
System RTL has been integrated with Smart+ (by Botta and Giordana).
|
1995 |
Implementation of a system for automatcally training
artificial agents, in which a controller (implemented as a neural network that can
alternatively be a RBFN, a Fuzzy Controller or a dynamic topology network)
is trained by an artificial tutor obtained by compiling a qualitative knowledge base,
containing non-operational knowledge about the goal to achieve.
The system has been tested against the cart-pole and against an assembly task
known as peg-in-hole.
In june/july, guest of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Invited speaker at AIT95, International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence
Techniques, Brno, Tcheck Republic.
|
1996 |
member of the program commettee of AIT96.
For two months, member of the European project MEDALUS-III aimed at
building an automatic system for classifying meteorological states, in
cooperation with ERSAL, Ente Regionale per lo Sviluppo Agricolo della
Lombardia.
I became dottore di ricerca presenting a thesis with title
Soft Teaching
Start of cooperation to a research project about the extraction of
characteristic fractal features from 2D images, exploiting a coding based on
Iterated Function System (IFS).
|
1997 |
I took part to the development of XFF, a system for
the extraction of fractal features that capture the characteristic
information of an isolated object starting from an image of it.
The algorithm produces similar codings for similar images, which can be used
in tasks of object recognition or classification.
Between 1997 and 1998, research
(founded by ABB research, S. S. Giovanni,
MI, Italy) about the possibility of applying Machine Learning techniques
to the automatic diagnosis of faults in electromechanical switches.
Start of cooperation to the AUDIP project, aimed at building
tools for self-evaluation for Computer Science students.
|
1998 |
The projects begun in the previous year have been continued.
In particular I developed a more general version of XFF, that can
handle transformations with any rotation. I also carried on tests
for the ABB project.
Post-doc at the University of Torino.
|
1999 |
Continuing the research on IFS condings, with a grant
from the project Giovani Ricercatori; continuing the work to the
AUDIP project.
Researcher at the Department of Computer Science,
Faculty of Sciences, from the Università degli Studi di Torino.
Since then, I am part of the
Logic Programming and Automated Reasoning
group, directed by prof. Alberto Martelli.
|
2005 |
From november 1st I am an associate professor at the Department of
Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematical Physical and Natural Sciences, University
of Torino.
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