Universita' di Ancona

Institute Name: Università di Ancona - Istituto di Informatica

Description:

The Istituto di Informatica is the centre of research in computer science at the Engineering Faculty of Universita' di Ancona. It has a staff of about 20 professors and researchers, in addition to technical support staff.

The institute is organised into research groups. Two groups, namely the Software Engineering and the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning groups will participate this project. The former group focuses on methods and tools for supporting information system development, while the latter focuses on the application of AI techniques to the specification and analysis of software applications.

Research projects funded either by MURST (Italian Ministry of University and of Scientific and Technological Research) or by the European held by members of both groups include:

InterData - Metodologie e tecnologie per la gestione di dati e processi su reti Internet e Intranet (1997-1999)
ECRAN - Extraction of Content Research at Near Market is an EU-funded language engineering research project designed to offer filtered access to the mass of textual information now delivered via TV screen or personal computer.
MODASPECTRA - MOtor Disability Assessment SPEcialists' TRAining a research and technology development project pertaining to the "Telematics Application Programme - Education and Training" sector of the 4th Framework Program for R&D of the European Union (1998-2000).

Researchers associated with the project:

Prof. Maurizio Panti, Dr. Alessandro Cucchiarelli, Dr. Claudia Diamantini, Dr. Luca Spalazzi, Dr. Sal Valenti

Brief CVs of Key Researchers:

Name: Maurizio Panti

Nationality: Italian

Email: panti@inform.unian.it

Home page: http://www.inform.unian.it/personale/panti.html

Academic Qualifications & Experience: Born in Ancona - Italy the 24/3/1947, from 1974 to 1989 he has been assistant professor of Theory and Application of the Electronic Computers, and to leave from 1985 until the 1989 he has been professor person in charge of Information Processing and Programming Techniques; from the 1989 today he is University professor of Data Bases in chair in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ancona.

In years 89-99 moreover it has held several courses (Foundations of Computer science I, Information Systems, Fundamentals of Computing, Data Bases) in the Athenaeum of Ancona and in those of Macerata and Camerino.

He has been/is active in UE projects on information extraction and web based teaching, he is responsible of the research unit of the University of Ancona in national project INTERDATA.

Its actual research interests are devoted to the design and implementation of Information Systems (requirement engineering), to the Data Bases with particular focus in the problems of discovery of similarity of conceptual schemas, to the multiagent techniques applied to the open and Cooperative Infomation Systems and to the Web technologies.

Name: Alessandro Cucchiarelli

Nationality: Italian

Email: alex@inform.unian.it

Home page: http://www.inform.unian.it/personale/cucchiarelli.html

Academic Qualifications & Experience: Alessandro Cucchiarelli was born in 1959, and received his degree (Laurea) in Electronic Engineering from University of Ancona in 1985. Since 1991 he has been a researcher at the Institute of Informatics at University of Ancona.

His main research interest is focused on Models and Tools for Cooperative Distributed Information Systems and Domain Modelling. In this field he investigated the possibility of application of distributed multi-agents models as support tools for workgroup. He defined and implemented a model of information agent capable of planning its activities by interacting through communication with peers to jointly reach common goals.

At present he is working on the application of the defined model to Workflow Management Systems.

He has been also involved in research activity on Requirement Engineering, Automatic Evaluation of Software and Robotics. He has been a member of groups working in several research projects funded by the Ministry of Research, the National Research Council and the European Community (Cost13, ECRAN).

He teaches Fondamenti di Informatica (both at the Laurea and at the Diploma degree courses) and holds seminars on Semantic Models of Data and Distributed Information Systems in the Database course (Laurea).

Name: Claudia Diamantini

Nationality: Italian

Email: diamanti@inform.unian.it

Home page: http://www.inform.unian.it/personale/diamantini.html

Academic Qualifications & Experience: M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Milano (December 19, 1990). Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligent Systems at the University of Ancona, School of Engineering (November 15, 1995).

Post-doctoral position at the Computer Science Institute, University of Ancona (February 1996 - Present).

Research Areas : Neural Networks (Adaptive Vector Quantization), Pattern Recognition (Non parametric classification), Information Systems (Information Retrieval and Reuse).

Name: Luca Spalazzi

Nationality: Italian

Email: spalazzi@inform.unian.it

Home page: http://www.inform.unian.it/personale/spalazzi.html

Academic Qualifications & Experience: M.S. in Electronic Engineering (1989) from the University of Ancona, Italy.

Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligent Systems (1994) from the University of Ancona, Italy.

Visiting Scholar at the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (July 1992 - August 1992).

Lecturer at the University of Ancona, Italy (1994/95).

Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ancona, Italy (June 1995 - Present).

Visiting Scholar at the Stanford University, California, USA (March 1996 - August 1996).

Name: Sal Valenti

Nationality: Italian

Email: valenti@inform.unian.it

Home page: http://www.inform.unian.it/personale/valenti.html

Academic Qualifications & Experience: Received his degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Ancona (1983). Since 1990 he has been researcher at the University of Ancona. His main research interests are focused on the elicitation of functional requirement specifications in the area of requirements engineering and in web based assessment in the field of distance learning. He has tutored a number of Master Thesis in the fields of Requirements Engineering and Web-Based Assessment

He has been a member of several research projects funded MURST, by the National Research Council (CNR) and by the European Community (MODASPECTRA).

Selected Publications:

C. Cioffi, M. Panti, L. Penserini, L. Spalazzi, E. Tonucci and S. Valenti, An Agent-based Platform for Federated Information Systems: Some Design Issues, Proceedings of the Int'l Conf. SNPD '2000 - Software Engineering Applied to Networking and Parallel Distributed Computing, R. Y Lee ed., 2000.

M. Panti, A. Dragoni, L. Spalazzi, C. Diamantini and S. Valenti, Agent Technologies for Federated Information Systems in the Public Administration, AgentLink News, 3, 12-14, 1999.

S. Valenti and M. Panti, Some Remarks About Research on Distributed Requirements Elicitation, Proc of the 17th Annual AoM/IAoM International Conference on Computer Science, 1999.

S. Valenti, C. Diamantini, M. Panti, L. Spalazzi, Specification of an Agent Based Architecture for Federated Information Systems, Proceedings of the Int'l Conf on Sofware Engineering and Applications, R.Y. Lee ed., 1999.

S. Valenti, A. Cucchiarelli, M. Panti, Measurement of Static Software Quality, Metrics News, Vol. 3, n. 2, 1998, 33-47

M. Panti, C. Diamantini, L. Spalazzi and S. Valenti, Federated Information Systems Architecture for Local Public Administration, in "Managing Information Technology Resources in Organizations in the Next Millennium", M. Khosrowpour ed., Idea Group, 1999.

S. Valenti, A.Cucchiarelli, M.Panti, Automatic Assessment of Static Software Quality, in "Effective Utilization and Management of Emerging Information Technologies", M. Khosrowpour ed., Idea Group, 425-434, 1998.

A. Cucchiarelli, M. Panti, S. Valenti, A Distributed Problem Solving Approach To Information Systems Modeling, in "Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing", M. H. Hamza ed., ACTA Press, 67-73, 1998.

S. Valenti, A.Cucchiarelli, M.Panti, Overcoming communication obstacles in user-analyst interaction for functional requirements elicitation, ACM-Software Engineering Notes, Vol. 23, 1, 50-55, 1998.

M. Panti, A. Cucchiarelli, S. Valenti, User-Analyst Interaction for Distributed Requirement Elicitation, in "Software Engineering ’98", R. Lee ed., ACTA Press, 292-296, 1998.

Contact Details:

Principal Investigator: Prof. Maurizio Panti

Address Istituto di Informatica, Università di Ancona, Via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy

Telephone number: +39 071 2204825

Telefax number: +39 071 2204474

EMail: panti@inform.unian.it

List of Members

Last up-date: 21 March 2000