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I graduated from the Computer Science Department of the University
of Milan in 1990 (Laurea Degree) specializing in logic-based Artificial
Intelligence. From 1990 to 1992 I was a Research Assistant in the same
department carrying out research in mathematical logic and automated theorem
proving. From 1992 to 1996, I took part in a cooperative project for Third
World Countries development, aimed at creating a Computer Science programme
at the Catholic University of Asunción, Paraguay. At Asunción, I taught
several computer science courses and started two research groups, on
automated theorem proving and machine learning.
In 1996
I joined the postgraduate programme in Computer Science at the University
of Toronto, obtaining
my PhD in 2002. From 1999 to 2002, I carried out my research at the Gatsby
Computational Neuroscience Unit. During my PhD I specialised in machine
learning under the supervision of Prof. Geoffrey E.
Hinton. I was predominantly involved in basic research, and in my thesis I
introduced Linear Relational Embedding, a new method for solving the problem
of learning symbolic relationships from examples.
After
completing my PhD, I moved towards Computational Biology. From 2002 to 2006 I
was a postdoctoral associate, first at the Genome Centre of Queen Mary
University of London (in Mansoor Saqi Lab) and subsequently at the Department of Molecular
Biophysics and Biochemistry of Yale University (in Mark Gerstein Lab). During
this period I developed novel computational approaches for clustering protein
sequences, protein remote homology detection, noise reduction in
protein-protein interactions, and prediction of gene essentiality from
genomic features.
Since
February 2006 I have been working in the Computer Science Department at Royal
Holloway, University
of London. I was
promoted to Reader in 2008 and to Professor in 2013. My research lies in
applying pattern-recognition/machine learning techniques for solving problems
in computational biology.
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