Service

I enjoy the community side of research: reviewing, organising events, building small communities around emerging topics, and occasionally discovering that organising a workshop requires almost as much debugging as writing code.

Leadership and community roles

I am the Chair of IAPR Technical Committee 19 — Computer Vision for Cultural Heritage Applications, serving for the 2024–2026 and 2026–2028 terms.

In August 2026, I received an IAPR Distinction Award, together with Vice Chair Guillaume Caron, in recognition of our strategic leadership of TC19.

I am also affiliated with CINI-AIIS, CITEL, CEDITH and the Gruppo di Ingegneria Informatica (GII).

Reviewing and Program Committees

I regularly serve as a reviewer and Program Committee member for international conferences in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision and pattern recognition.

In 2026 I served as Area Chair for NeurIPS.

Selected conferences include AAAI, CVPR, ECCV, ACL, ECML PKDD, ECAI, WACV, ICPR, CBMS, IJCNN, and ICDAR.

I also regularly review for journals including Nature, International Journal of Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, Remote Sensing of Environment, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Expert Systems with Applications, Information Sciences, Knowledge-Based Systems, Machine Learning, Heritage Science, Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, and International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition.

In 2025 I was recognised as a Distinguished Program Committee Member at ECML PKDD for my contribution to the Research Track.

Editorial work

• International Journal of Intelligent Systems — Wiley, Editorial Board (2022–2025)
• Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience — Hindawi, Editorial Board (2021–2023)
• npj Heritage Science — Springer Nature, guest editor of the 2026/27 collection Robotics and Physical Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage, with Guillaume Caron and El Mustapha Mouaddib
• Journal of Imaging — MDPI, guest editor of the 2020/21 Special Issue Fine Art Pattern Extraction and Recognition, with Giovanna Castellano and Fabio Bellavia

Scientific events

Selected organisation roles include:

• PRESTIGE 2026 — Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision for eHeritage and Digital Humanities Workshop, ICPR 2026, Lyon
• ADV 2025 — International Workshop on Advances in Drone Vision, ICIAP 2025, Rome
• Applications of AI in the Analysis of Cultural and Artistic Heritage, Special Session at MLSP 2025, Istanbul
• FAPER — four editions of the International Workshop on Fine Art Pattern Extraction and Recognition (ICPR 2020; ICIAP 2021, 2023, 2025)
• e-Heritage and Robotics — workshops at IROS 2021, ICCV 2023 and ICRA 2026
• EAIS 2020, Local Arrangement Chair
• DeepLearn Spring 2023, Local Co-Chair

The 2026 PRESTIGE workshop was born from the fusion of our previous FAPER and PatReCH activities: a small attempt to bring closely related communities together.

Research evaluation

I have served as evaluator for research projects and outputs including PRIN 2020, VQR 2015–2019, the FAR programme of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia / Fondazione di Modena, the Anniversary Fund of the City of Vienna, innovation plans of Regione Emilia-Romagna, and the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia.

Awards and recognitions

• IAPR Distinction Award, 2026
• ECML PKDD Distinguished Program Committee Member, 2025
• IEEE CIS Italy Chapter Best Paper — Honorable Mention, 2025
• NL4AI Best Paper, 2024
• FedCSIS Distinction Award, 2023
• NVIDIA GPU Grant, 2018
• SFLA Best Presentation, 2018

Outreach

I regularly take part in public-engagement and science-communication activities on artificial intelligence and its applications, including seminars, public events, school initiatives and interviews.

In 2025 I published the popular-science book Intelligenza artificiale per curiosi: una mini-guida scientifica per tutti with Edizioni Dedalo.

Over the years I have contributed to events and initiatives including Il Libro Possibile, Libri nel Borgo Antico, Art & Science across Italy, FameLab and La Notte della Ricerca, and have given specialist lectures for professional associations, companies and public institutions.

I have also taught several editions of training activities on graphometric signature analysis, organised by the Italian Graphological Association and its local partners. This long-running collaboration grew out of my earlier research on explainable decision-support tools for forensic handwriting examination.