Ongoing Projects

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women worldwide, affecting 1 in 8 women. The figures from WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer estimate that in 2020 worldwide cases of breast cancer accounted for 24% of all cancers in women (2.26 million women and 685,000 deaths globally). Mammography is the gold standard technology for breast screening, which has been demonstrated through different randomized controlled trials to reduce breast cancer mortality.

L’industria conciaria italiana, la cui produzione vale il 65% del totale prodotto nell’Unione Europea e circa il 20% della produzione mondiale, ricopre un ruolo di assoluto rilievo nel panorama internazionale.

Il contesto è caratterizzato da (a) contrazione del fatturato con conseguente riduzione di imprese e posti di lavoro e (b) richiesta da parte del mercato di articoli in pelle prodotti in modo eco-sostenibile, questo progetto BASILISCO si pone l’obiettivo di:

When decoding emotional and social signals in everyday life, we are usually provided with emotional cues from more than one sensory modality, mainly vision and hearing. Although the auditory information is relevant in communicating emotional and social meanings, vision seems to be the most important sensory modality for the extraction of socio-emotional stimulus qualities.

Many decisions in modern societies have a very complex scientific basis. Clinicians have to choose between different drugs for treating a patient. Central bankers have to forecast the evolution of financial markets, and to control the amount of money that circulates in a society. Physicists have to evaluate the impact of continued CO2 emissions for life on the planet.

This project brings together a variety of competences and methods to address an issue that has recently gained attention by scholars working at the intersection of different disciplines: economics, psychology, sociology, cognitive sciences. The issue under debate concerns the interaction between cognitive modes and prosocial behavior, i.e., the extent to which individual behavior is beneficial to the society as a whole. The basic question is: which cognitive mode is more likely to foster prosocial behavior? Up to now, such a debate is lively and far from being set.

Our society is increasingly data-driven. Smartphones, computers, and smart sensors acquire, store, and transmit myriads of data, more and more easily. A major challenge for scientists is how to best use the information contained in the data. In particular, control theorists need to better understand how to design algorithms that take automatic decisions on the basis of data, both recorded offline and acquired in real-time from sensors. The aim of this project is to provide fundamental scientific advances on how to design control systems directly from data.

Both deforestation and pollution are key factors in global climate change. This is because forests are natural pollution sinks able to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere and convert them into oxygen, which both humans and animals can breathe safely. Unless proper countermeasures are taken, deforestation represents a big problem for climate: by cutting down forests without replacing the trees that are removed, the absorption efficiency of such carbon sinks is reduced, with possible catastrophic consequences.

In several fields of engineering and technology there is a growing demand of fast and accurate numerical simulations. New industrial and bio-medical products need to be efficiently designed, tested, and certified at different scales. New bio-inspired and engineered materials, conceived to reduce costs or to improve performance, must be evaluated in different working scenarios. The tragic consequences of natural hazards should be reduced by means of accurate predictions of possible interactions with structures and infrastructures.

These systems are, and will be more and more, pervasive and ubiquitous, also in safety-critical situations. Examples range from robots and drones delivering goods to self-driving vehicles and smart buildings. These systems must satisfy safety requirements, and meet performance goals. It is fundamental to keep all such requirements into account from the design phase, to reduce the cost of development and avoid dangerous situations coming from unexpected requirement violation.