speakers
Thomas Wolfers, University of Tübingen
Biography: In my research I develop machine learning methods to understand factors that contribute to (mental) health problems in individuals. I hold a PhD in neuroscience from the Radboud University and have been working as a Postdoc in Netherlands (Radboud University), researcher in Norway (University of Oslo), and visiting scholar in the United Kingdom (University of Oxford) before starting my research group in Tübingen (Germany). In the long run, I aim to implement technological developments into clinical practice working together with clinicians and researchers. Outside of the lab, I study yoga, meditation and enjoy reading but also like social activities and music.
Francesco Sammarco, University of Tübingen
Biography: I am a Computer Science Engineer with a passion for exploring explainability techniques and making sense of black-box models in machine learning. I believe these techniques can play a transformative role in mental health applications by improving transparency and trust in AI-driven tools. In my research, I aim to bridge the gap between advanced machine learning methods and their practical implementation in mental health diagnostics and treatment. Outside of my technical work, I enjoy sports and gaming, finding a balance between intellectual and physical challenges.
Lecture: Machine Learning for Parsing individual Differences
In this talk, we will explore how machine learning can be leveraged to model complex biological systems, particularly the brain. We will dive into the latest techniques, with a specific focus on brain imaging. During the practical session, we will examine the possibilities and challenges of explainable and interpretable machine learning in the context of brain imaging.
Paola Pisano, Turin University
Biography: She is a Professor of Economics and Business Management at the University of Turin and has published over 100 articles in national and international journals. She was a visiting professor at Westminster and Glasgow University. She is the director of the Highest Lab on AI and BigData, the founder of Deeplomacy start-up and president of the Randstad AI&Humanity advisory board. She was the Minister of Technological Innovation and Digitisation of the Italian Republic during the Conte II government, Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Minister of Public Function in the Draghi government, and Councillor for Innovation and Smart City of the City of Turin. She worked in Italy and abroad in consultancy companies on technological transformation projects for companies in various sectors (banking, pharmaceuticals, publishing, fashion).
Lecture: AI and Human collaboration: The Academic perspective
Since the advent of Generative AI in 2022, artificial intelligence has demonstrated transformative potential across industries and disciplines—impacting not only workers but also citizens of all ages, professions, and geographies. While its individual-level benefits are well documented, organizations still grapple with how to harness AI strategically to enhance innovation, increase profit, and identify new opportunities. This two-hour session will explore the integration of AI in healthcare and life sciences, focusing on three core themes:
1. AI and organization: we will discuss how organizations can deploy AI not merely as an individual tool, but as a lever to increase innovation, generate more balanced solutions and share competencies across different functions.
2. AI and tools for Research and Collaboration: A practical, interactive session will introduce participants to a selection of AI tools, to support research and collaboration.
3. Case Studies in AI-Driven Healthcare Transformation: Through detailed case study analysis, we will present diverse applications of AI across healthcare domains. Special focus will be given to two research projects currently under development at the Highest Lab 1. AI-nutrition and processing; 2. AI and diet in oncology therapy.
Throughout the session, we will alternate theoretical reflection and hands-on engagement, adopting an interactive teaching format inspired by Harvard case-based learning.
Irene Sardelletti, Microsoft Industry
Biography: TBD
Lecture: TBD
TBD
Alessandro Bria, University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale
Biography: Alessandro Bria received a MSc degree in Computer Engineering from the University of L’Aquila in 2010 and a Ph.D. Degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Cassino in 2014. In 2019 he joined the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering (DIEI) at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, where is now an Associate Professor in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. He has authored over 70 International Journals and Conference Proceedings research papers. He is a member of the editorial board of the journals “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence” and “Frontiers in Big Data”, and of the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR). His current research interests include biomedical image analysis (breast mammo/DBT/MRI, lung CT, brain MRI, cytology) and diffusion (brain MRI), EEG signal analysis, EHR analysis, multimodal stress detection. He is co-inventor of TeraStitcher and TeraFly for reconstruction and assisted visualisation of terabyte-sized microscopy images.
Lecture: Leveraging Transformer Models in Healthcare
The advent of Transformer models and attentional mechanisms has revolutionised the field of artificial intelligence, offering unprecedented capabilities in natural language processing, computer vision, bioinformatics, and multimodal data integration. We will begin with an overview of the fundamental principles underlying attentional mechanisms and Transformer models. The seminar will then highlight key applications in healthcare, such as the analysis of electronic health records (EHRs), medical imaging, and drug discovery. By the end of the seminar, attendees will be equipped with a comprehensive understanding of how Transformer models can drive innovation and improve outcomes in healthcare and biological research.
Concetto Spampinato, University of Catania
Biography: Concetto Spampinato earned his Laurea degree and completed his PhD in Computer Engineering at the University of Catania in 2004 and 2008, respectively. He currently serves as an Associate Professor at the same institution. He spent a research term at the University of Edinburgh during 2008- 2009, concentrating on object detection and recognition. Since October 2016, he has been a Courtesy Faculty member at Center for Research in Computer Vision at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Spampinato’s research focuses on learning-based computer vision and pattern recognition, especially using deep learning techniques. In 2014, he founded the Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision Laboratory at the University of Catania. He has authored over 200 publications and led various EU, national, and regional projects on foundational AI and its applications.
Lecture: Advancing Vision: Models, Tuning, and Generative Breakthroughs
Foundation models have revolutionized computer vision, with Vision Transformers (ViTs) emerging as a cornerstone in understanding and manipulating visual data. This talk explores the evolution and impact of ViTs and other transformative architectures, highlighting their effectiveness in tasks such as image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation. The discussion extends to foundation generative models, particularly diffusion models, which have fundamentally changed image generation by iteratively refining predictions. We delve into their principles and showcase their applications, emphasizing their role in enhancing creativity and fidelity in visual content creation. Furthermore, the presentation introduces techniques like prompt tuning that enable optimizing foundation models—such as ViTs and others—for specific downstream applications, without extensive re-training. Through these insights, this talk provides the latest advancements in foundation and generative models, underscoring their potential to reshape computer vision paradigms and catalyze new possibilities across diverse fields and applications.
Enea Parimbelli, University of Pavia
Biography: Enea Parimbelli is assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical engineering at the University of Pavia (Italy). Enea’s research revolves around biomedical applications of AI, decision support, health informatics, e- and m-health. Enea thoroughly enjoys scientific research and teaching, interdisciplinary work and cross-pollination between fields, which are the main drivers for his willingness to work in biomedical research. In his free time Enea is also a fish-geek, enjoys beach- and indoor volleyball, good books and weird movies.
Lecture: From the first draft to the manuscript acceptance
Academic publishing, i.e., reading and writing about scientific research, is an integral part of the work of every scientist regardless of the specific career stage. In recent years the landscape has been rapidly changing with the advent, and establishment, of open-science practices, preprints, predatory publications and the never-ending increase in the number of active researchers, submissions and published articles. The lecture aims at giving an introduction to some of the key points that researchers in training need to better navigate this complexity, which will become the cornerstone of the evaluation of the quality of the research they produce, career advancement and establishing credibility in the field. We will touch upon topics such as conducting a proper “related work” literature search, selecting the best publication venues for original work, best practices regarding reporting and reproducibility, and other relevant themes. Suggestions for specific research-oriented tools will also be provided during class, to facilitate immediate transfer of best practices into researchers’ workflow.
Francesca Cordova, Legance
Biography: Francesca Cordova is a litigation and arbitration lawyer focusing on industrial and intellectual property law and unfair competition. Francesca assists clients on strategies of the IP rights protection and in drafting and negotiation contracts concerning every form of exploitation of IP rights and technology transfers, with particular focus on issues relating to trademarks, patents, copyright, trade secrets and new technologies (Blockchain, NFTs, Artificial Intelligence, IoTs). In addition, Francesca provides assistance in the life science & pharma sector, with a focus on contractual issues related to the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, research and development agreements, patent and know-how licensing agreements, and copyright issues related to scientific material. Finally, Francesca has gained experience in assisting and representing Italian and foreign clients in litigation proceedings (preliminary, on the merits and before arbitration panels).
Giuseppe De Ruvo, Università Vita-Salute del San Raffaele
Biography: Giuseppe De Ruvo is a doctoral candidate in moral philosophy at the University Vita-Salute del San Raffaele in Milan and a contributor to Limes, an Italian journal of geopolitics. In addition to teaching at the aforementioned university, his work focuses on critical theory of digital capitalism, the relationship between philosophy and geopolitics, and Sino-American technological competition. In addition to several articles in Italian and international scholarly journals, his publications include From Hegel to TikTok. Metaphysics and Geopolitics of Digital Capitalism (Ebs, 2022) and History and Philosophy of Geopolitics (Carocci 2024). He is currently editing the first Italian translation of Henry Kissinger’s Thesis on The Meaning of History. Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant (Mimesis). Accelerating the Collapse will be published by Mimesis in 2025. TikTok and geopolitics as a critique of life forms. In 2026, however, the monograph Elon Musk. Philosophy, Geopolitics, Industry.
Andrea Enoch Bertolini, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
Biography: TBD
Paolo Soda, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma
Biography: Paolo Soda is a full Professor of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at University Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, and he is a Visiting Professor in AI and Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Diagnostics and Intervention, Umeå University, Sweden. He is the coordinator of the Italian National PhD program in AI, Health and Life Sciences area (XXXIX and XL cycles). He is an expert in AI: his research interests include multimodal (deep) learning, generative approaches, eXplainable AI, and resilience of AI algorithms. His research is applied to various domains, such as medical imaging, clinical data, 5P medicine, social media analytics and energy management. He is included in the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List 2023 and 2024 (single year and career), and he was awarded in the top 500 Italian AI experts in 2024. He is co-founder of BPCOmedia srl, a university spin-off exploiting AI for predictive monitoring of COPD, and served as Chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Computational Life Sciences.
Vittoradolfo Tambone, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma
Biography: TBD
Francesco De Micco, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma
Biography: TBD
Valerio Cusimano, IASI-CNR
Biography: TBD
Lecture: Shaping the Future: Geopolitics and the Ethical Landscape of Artificial Intelligence
TBD
Joseph Stancanello, Elekta
Biography: Dr. Stancanello graduated with Ph.D. and Executive MBA degrees from Politecnico di Milano-School of Management, Italy, in the field of imaging and therapy. He specialized in driving strategic innovation at International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has taught mathematical analysis at Padova University, Italy, and worked in the Medical Physics Department at Vicenza Hospital and at Bracco Imaging. Along his career, he has served in several roles in imaging companies, and at Siemens Headquarters in Germany as Principal Expert and Director of product portfolio in oncology and at GE Healthcare as Director of MRI research and applications and workflow. He is co-author of more than 100 abstracts, full papers and book chapters as well as many patents. He has been involved in many innovations such as MRI compressed sensing, zero TE imaging, quantitative Cone Beam CT imaging, AI applications for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in collaboration with IBM. In the last years, he has focused on nurturing AI companies and bringing to market several AI products for the prognosis of cancer evolution and prediction of therapeutic approaches, such as targeted therapy or immunotherapy as well as chemoradiotherapy (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28595812). He is currently serving as Global Vice-president of Clinical Applications at Elekta, with a focus on revolutionizing the current radiotherapy workflows also with the help of AI innovations.
Lecture: AI applications in clinical products: success, pitfalls and future overlook.
The lecture will focus on analyzing the key success factors of clinically marketed products as well as pitfalls associated to them such as regulatory clearance, market acceptance and risk mitigation. Based on the analysis in the key dimensions of mistake identification and correction capabilities of the AI generated results in clinical products, the different levels of market acceptance will be investigated: the results of such an analysis will be used to depict the future of AI applications in clinical practices, with the different time constants of acceptance as a function of the level of the aforementioned dimensions.
Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute
Biography: Carles Sierra is the Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), located in Barcelona. He has contributed to Artificial Intelligence research since 1985, specialising in Knowledge Representation, Auctions, Electronic Institutions, Autonomous Agents, Multiagent Systems, and Agreement Technologies. He has served on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals, including “Artificial Intelligence” (AIJ) and “Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research” (JAIR), two of the leading generalist AI journals. Additionally, he was the Editor-in-Chief of “Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems” (JAAMAS), a journal dedicated to research on autonomous agents. Carles Sierra played a key role in organizing IJCAI, the premier international AI conference, in 2011 in Barcelona and served as the President of the IJCAI Program Committee in 2017 in Melbourne. He is a Fellow of EurAI, the European Association for Artificial Intelligence, where he also served as President from 2020 to 2024. In recognition of his contributions to the field, he was awarded the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award in 2019.
Lecture: From Negotiation to Social Intelligence: A Journey Through Multiagent Systems
Multiagent systems (MAS) offer a powerful paradigm for designing intelligent systems composed of interacting autonomous agents. Over the years, my work has explored how individual agency can scale into complex, socially intelligent behaviour through negotiation, coordination, and reasoning about others. In this talk, I will trace key developments in MAS through the lens of my research—from foundational contributions in automated negotiation and computational argumentation to recent models that integrate the Theory of Mind to enable more strategic and adaptive agent interactions. I will discuss the evolution of agent architectures, such as the TomAbd model, which extends BDI reasoning with abductive capabilities to explain and predict others’ behaviours. I will also highlight applications of MAS in socially relevant domains, including aporophobia modelling for public policy, and reflect on how value-aligned multiagent reasoning can support trustworthy AI. By bringing together logic-based models, social awareness, and strategic interaction, this talk aims to illustrate the critical role of MAS in shaping both the theoretical foundations and societal applications of AI.
Edoardo Barba, Sapienza University of Rome
Biography: TBD
Simone Conia, Sapienza University of Rome
Biography: TBD
Lecture: A Short and Intense Journey Through Large Language Models
TBD