EDUCATION AND ACADEMIC POSITION
Alessandro Bevilacqua graduated in Computer Science in
1995 with an experimental Thesis work in the field of
Numerical Analysis, aiming at studying and developing innovative parallel
algorithms for astronomical image restoration. In 2002 he
received the PhD in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
from the University of Bologna, defending a dissertation on motion analysis algorithms for automatic event detection in video
sequences. Since 2005 he serves as Assistant Professor at DISI (School of Engineering and Architecture), University of Bologna.
SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY
From 1995 to 1997 Alessandro Bevilacqua had been
involved in the research activities of the Numerical Analysis Group
the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bologna for
medical and astronomical image restoration, by using parallel and
distributed MIMD architectures (e.g., Transputer networks, Network
of Workstations, the CRAY T3E). In 1996 Alessandro
Bevilacqua cooperated with the CNR (National Research Center), where
he developed methods and algorithms for radiographic image
analysis. In 1997 he joined the INFN (National Institute for
Nuclear Physics) where, together with other researchers, started
the Medical Image Group (MIG), still existing. The research topics
regarded the application of the Artificial Intelligence, in particular Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to 2-D
and 3-D real time reconstruction of medical images coming from
radiographic (mammography), tomographic and emission devices (CT, PET, SPECT),
even by exploiting parallel and distributed high performance
architectures. This activity led to the first European prototypic
system for Computed Aided Diagnosis to classify microcalcifications
in digital mammography and to two patents. In 1997 he also
joined the HPCN (High Performance Computing Network) group of the
ENEA (National Agency for Energy and Environment) of Bologna where
in the next two years he developed the first PET image
reconstruction algorithms based on parallel ANN implemented on the
ENEA's APE100 parallel computer (a SIMD architecture endowed with 128 PE's).
In 1999 he spent a six-month period at the Brown University
(Providence, RI, USA), invited by Prof. Leon Cooper (Nobel Prize for
Physics – 1972) to join the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems
to carry out researches concerning the BCM ANN and its applications
to medical, aerial and satellite image analysis and reduction of feature dimension. In 2000 he started the Computer Vision Group
(CVG), that he is currently leading, at the Department of
Electronics, Computer Science and Systems (DEIS) of Bologna. So
far, about 50 researchers have worked in the CVG, including professors,
academic researchers and fellows, besides last year students. A
system to characterize the skin surface through capacitive image
analysis and a system for scene understanding and tracking and
analysis of people behavior are among the most significant outcome
of the CVG's research activities. In 2000 Alessandro
Bevilacqua started cooperating with the Clinic Biochemical Research
Center of the "S. Orsola" Academic Hospital of the University of Bologna, to develop algorithms for reconstruction and analysis of Magnetic Resonance images and spectrographic data. In
2001 he coordinated a two-year project funded by the
National Institute for Biostructures and Biosystems (INBB) to
develop a method exploiting non-supervised neural networks to
accurate motion detection for visual surveillance systems. In
2002 he joined ARCES (Advanced Research Center on Electronic
Systems) where he has started, and he is currently leading, the
Research Unit for Computer Vision whose research topics are
computational methods for pattern recognition, image analysis and
scene understanding.
In 2004 he coordinated at ARCES the software-team 5-year Project DERMOCAL (DEvice for skin suRface MOrphologiCal anALysis), aiming at developing a portable capacitive device capable to infer skin aging on the basis of the automatic analysis of the topographical features extracted from capacitive skin images.
Since 2005 he has been the scientific coordinator in several research Projects supported with public Italian or European grants, or private funds, based on Artificial Intelligence and machine learning paradigms, in the security, aerospace, biomedical and agriculture fields, in collaboration with public bodies (Italian Space Agency, ETH in Zürich) as well as with private companies (NEXION spa and VRM spa [IT], Syngenta spa [CH]). In addition, he has led several Projects in the biomedical field, in collaboration with foreign (Beaujon Academic Hospital [FR], King’s College London [UK]) and Italian hospitals (S. Orsola, Oncological institute of Romagna for research on tumours, Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli) Hospitals to carry out translational researches in the oncologic field.
Alessandro Bevilacqua has also well-established collaborations with leading industries in manufacturing (ALCANTARA Spa [IT]) and ICT sectors to exploit artificial intelligence to develop industrial prototypes in the biomedical fields, automotive, agriculture, augmented and mixed reality and, in general, defect analysis and quality control of processes and products, based on real-time image analysis, also with mobile devices, for automatic objects measurement, recognition and classification.
PUBBLICATION AND EDITORIAL ACTIVITY
Alessandro Bevilacqua has authored more than 235 works, including extended works published in referred international (69) and national (1) Journals, international conference proceedings (66), book’s chapters (9), abstracts in international (58) and national (32) conference proceedings, besides 4 Patents (1 international, 1 European, 2 Italian). He also been serving as a Reviewer to the most important Journals in the Computer Vision area, including Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Transactions on Image processing, IEEE Access, European Radiology.
TEACHING ACTIVITY
Since 2000 Alessandro Bevilacqua has taught courses by many Faculties of the University of Bologna in the fields of 2D and 3D Image Processing and Computer vision systems, Medical and Biomedical Image Processing, Fundamentals of Computer Science and Logic Design.
Since 2020 he teaches Computer Vision e Machine Learning at the II level International Master SPICES.
He has supervised 12 PhD students, 10 post-doc and 42 research fellows, besides 80 BS and MS students in the field of Computer Vision, medical and biomedical imaging in the Degrees of Physics, Computer Science and Engineering, Biomedical engineering.
INSTITUTIONAL ACTIVITY
Alessandro Bevilacqua has regularly served as a member or the President of the board of examiners in open competitions for PhD final examination or candidate admittance, fellowships or research grant assignments.
Since 2007, he has been serving as a member of the Board of the European PhD Programme in Information Technology of the University of Bologna, until its termination in 2014. Since 2020 he has been serving as a member of the Board of the multidisciplinary PhD Programme in Health and Technology of the University of Bologna.
