Enrico Denti

Education

Enrico Denti received his master degree cum laude in Electronic Engineering in December 1991, got a grant in 1993 from the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and received his PhD in Computer Engineering in 1998.

Academic career

He first worked as contract professor at the University of Ferrara (1994 and 1998) and Bologna 1999). Then, from 2000 to 2004 he worked as a Research Associate at the School of Engineering of the University of Bologna (Dept. of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems-DEIS). Starting from December 2004 he has been Associate Professor, currently in force at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI). 

Teaching activity

He served as contract professor of computer science first at the University of Ferrara, then at Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna (both in Bologna and Cesena campus). Currently he is responsible of the "Foundations of Informatics T-2" course in the bachelors in Computer Engineering, and of the "Languages and Computational Models M" course in the master in Computer Engineering.

Institutional services and roles

He has been a member for 9 years of the Executive committee (Giunta) of the Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems (DEIS). From 2003 to 2004 he has been a member of the School's Teaching Commission, then - some years later - of the School's Census Commission. He also coordinated for some years the commission in charge of evaluating students' transfers and curricula as concerns Computer Engineering. He participated to several workgroups inside the affiliation departments. Currently he is a member of the Quality Assurance Commission of Computer Engineering courses and of the Commission in charge of evaluating the teaching contracts' applications for the Computer Engineering sector. Since 2016 he is responsible of an Erasmus+ exchange program with the Faculty of Informatics of the Kaunas University of Technology (KTU, Lithuania). Since 2017 he is coordinating the Faculty Commission in charge of designing the whole timetable schedule of the courses at the School of Engineering and Architecture in Bologna. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Executive committee (Giunta) of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI). In Nov. 2019, he has been elected as the Coordinator for the Degree programmes in Computer Engineering.

Scientific activity

He has written over 80 publications in international and national journals, books, conferences and workshops, with over 1800 citations (on Google Scholar DB). Between the 2015 and 2017 he has been the scientific referent of the Bologna unit of the BISON European research project (H2020); healso co-supervised and is supervising Ph.D students and post-doc researchers. He is also member of several international program committees, and contributed to the organization of international conferences and workshops (local organising chair).

Research projects 

• BISON: BIg Speech data analytics for cONtact centres (Horizon 2020, 2015-2017)

Scientific and editorial committees

• Member of the Editorial Board of Information [http://www.mdpi.com/journal/information] (since 09/2018)
• Member of the scientific committee of ScienceOpen [http://www.scienceopen.com/]
• Member of the editorial committee of The Scientific World Journal
• Member of the scientific committee of ICAART (2012-current)
• Member of the scientific committee of MODELSWARD (2012-current)
• Member of the scientific committee of PECCS (2014-current)
• Member of the scientific committee of WebIST (2012-current)
• Member of the scientific committee of PECCS (2012-current)
• Member of the scientific committee of TruMAS 2012

Main research interests

· Multi-paradigm programming & software engineering: hybrid and multi-pplatform programming languages and paradigms, multi-paradigm programming models with special regard to the integration between the declarative and the object-oriented paradigms; related software development processes and support tools

· Programming languages and infrastructures: programming languages, compilers and interpreters, relationship between languages and support infrastructures

· Coordination models, languages and infrastructures: languages, models, technologies and infrastructures for the coordination of complex, heterogeneous, open interactive systems, (with special regard to multi-agent systems applications); engineering and governing of the interaction dimension.

· Multi-Agent Systems (MAS): models, languages and technologies for multi-agent systems; models and methodologies for the engineering of agent-oriented software systems (AOSE); tools, technologies and infrastructures for MAS.

· Internet of Things & Smart Home (IoT): applications of MAS to pervasive scenarios in the contexts of IoT and Smart Home

· Software engineering: models, languages and methodologies for the engineering of software systems with special regard to open and dynamic environments and agent-oriented systems (AOSE);

· Legal informatics:  inter-disciplinary approach of legal problems related to / emerging from the development of advanced software systems

· Security:  technological aspects of information systems security; methodologies and design patterns for secure systems; legal implications of security

· Other interests: e-commerce; e-government; e-participation; algorithms for stock control problems 

Inter-disciplinary aspects

· Organisational and social aspects: agents constitute an effective metaphor to capture many relevant aspects of human activities which imply organisational, legal and social aspects. So, multi-agents systems need to deal with such aspects, too: like any complex society, they need norms, organisation charts, hierarchies and roles, as well as control entities able to enforce the societal rules and take the proper countermeasures if violations occur.
·  Norms and legal aspects: the design of secure and legally-compliant software systems requires that all the applicable national and international laws are properly taken into account, especially with regard to privacy data management. This requirement must inspire the design and development of a law-abiding software system throughout the whole development cycle, from the earliest design phases: legal compliance is not something that can be added on top of an already existing system at a later stage.

· Usability and trust aspects: systems aimed at handling reserved data (including industrial know-how, patents, operation modes that often constitute the major asset in small but highly specialised companies) pose special challenges with respect to usability and user interface, since they must lead the (even non-expert) user to trust the system, understand its philosophy and e overall transmitting a simplicity feeling, so as to overcome the “trust digital divide” that often constitutes the actual barrier to innovation. This is particularly relevant when the service is provided online, as it is more and more common today, because in this case the user has no direct control on the system functioning and - key aspect - on its installation, raising further security and trust issues. 

Acknowledgements

2014 - Best paper award at the ITS 2014 international conference (New Taipei City, Taiwan) with the paper "Extending a Smart Home Multi-Agent System with Role-Based Access Control", by Enrico Denti, Roberta Calegari, and Marco Prandini.