Research

Orientation

My research spans across two main disciplines, that is, software engineering and human computer interaction. I am particularly interested in human factors in software engineering approaches and practice. My research interests concern the analysis and design of large scale software systems focusing on web systems which provide access to integrated data and services in the e-science and, in particular, in the biomedical research. Four main drivers guide my research. It is application oriented and user centered, is inspired by and validated against real existing industrial problems and adopts a holistic multidisciplinary approach. Finally, the kind of research I like to carry out always pursues two objectives: (i) use and customize state of the art software engineering and HCI methods to tackle complex cutting-edge applicative problems and (ii) use the experience achieved working on these problems to work on the advancement of the state of the art in the related software scientific disciplines. More details? I do not want to bother all my kind guests with a long page thus if you want to know a little more about my research activities, please have a look to my CV (download my CV)!

Grant Awarded

Current Research Projects

Usability and Interaction Patterns for Bioinformatics Resources in Cancer Research (since March 2007)
I am the Principal Investigator of this project carried out in cooperation with the Department of Oncology in UCL and funded by CR-UK. The project has two main objectives: (i) to identify factors which may hinder the full adoption of bioinformatics data repositories in the cancer research domain and (ii) to provide solutions (by way of interaction design patterns) to enhance their impact on research activities.

Platform Reference Model for the NCRI Informatics Platform (since October 2005)
I am working in collaboration with the National Cancer Research Institute to the analysis and architecture design of the NCRI Platform, a large scale system which will integrate data and services related to cancer research produced in research initiatives in the UK and worldwide. From the applicative perspective, I am working to the definition of integration models, processes, and architectures, based on model driven approaches, to enable a sustainable and effective integration of data and services. To this end I am cooperating with a team addressing similar problems in the caBIG initiative at NCI, US. From the software engineering point of view, I am addressing two main issues. First, I trying to understand how to combine requirements engineering (based on goal oriented techniques) and domain analysis methods in the early analysis of large scale integrative systems in the biomedical (and more in general e-science) domain. I am also addressing typical issues of this domain such as multidisciplinary, capillarity, high specialization of sub-fields trying to improve the communication between requirements engineers and domain experts. Second, I am working to the definition of a framework to relate requirements to architectural choices for large scale integrative systems. In this strand I am collaborating with researchers in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA).

Past Research Projects

DICE (January 2003 – September 2005)
DICE (Distributed Infrastructure for Cultural hEritage) is a National (Italian) research project whose aim is to define an innovative model and a suitable infrastructure for enabling the integration and interoperability of distributed sources in the cultural heritage field in Italy. The main goal of the system is to improve the communication between cultural information providers (institutions, museums, etc.) and different categories of professional users (scholars, publishers, cultural-tourism operators, etc.). Project Web site ->. (www.progettodice.it).
Role: group coordinator. Project’s Partners: Enterprise Digital Architect S.p.A, Eworks Sud S.p.A., Markon.NET S.p.A. Consultant units: HOC – Polytechnic of Milan, CEFRIEL – Polytechnic of Milan, Fondazione Rosselli, Editore Colonnese, Palepolis srl (Viaggi del Delfino), Consorzio Forma (Università Normale of Pisa).

GENESIS-D (February 2004 – June 2005)
Genesis-D is an industrial research project that aims at defining a set of design methodologies and an applicative framework for the environmental domain to be used by software companies operating in this field in Italy.
Role: researcher. Project’s Partners: Edinform srl, HOC – Polytechnic of Milan, SET-Lab – University of Lecce.

UWA (January 2001 – March 2003)
UWA (Ubiquitous Web Applications) is a European research project (IST) whose aim is to define a set of methodologies, tools and UML-like notations for designing ubiquitous web applications, that is, applications that are time, location and device aware and that are customized on the basis of the user needs and profiles. Project Web site ->. (www.progettodice.it).
Role: researcher and group coordinator. Project’s Partners: Atlantis S.p.A (Italy), Laboratorio HOC Polytechnic of Milan (Italy), Banca 121 spa (Italy), University of Linz - Department of Information Systems (Austria), University College London (United Kingdom), Fundación Robotiker (Spain), Punto Comercial Innovatión y Servicios en Internet, S.A (Spain), MUSIC/TUC Technical University of Crete (Greece), Università della Svizzera Italiana (Swiss), Siemens AG Österreich (Austria).

E-LEN (2002 – 2004):
E-LEN (a network of E-LearNing Centres) is a European research Project (Socrates Programme) whose aim is to create a network of e-learning centres and leading organisations in the learning technologies and to investigate the most promising e-learning technologies.
Role: group coordinator. Project’s Partners: University of Cyprus (co-ordinator); The Learning Lab, University of Maastricht (NL); SALT, University of Lancaster (UK); A Priori Ltd (UK); Ilmenau Technical University (DE); Hypermedia Open Center – Politecnico of Milan (IT); InterMedia, University of Bergen (NO); NITOL (NO); National Technical University of Athens (GR); Open University (NL); University of Lugano

R.IN.TUR (1998-1999): Italian National Research Project
R.IN.TUR (Research in Tourism Innovation) aims at designing and developing a virtual tourist agency accessible via internet and enabling various tourist operators to propose tourist services.
Role: Designer and developer of the virtual agency. Project’s Partners: Università di Lecce and PASTIS CNRSM.