Her research activity focuses on programming languages, with
particular reference to logic programming languages and their
extensions towards modular and object-oriented programming,
artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, multi-agent
systems, applications of expert systems with particular emphasis on
medical domain. In particular, knowledge based systems for
biochemical and microbiological laboratory data validation,
bacteria infections monitoring and scheduling for screening
processes was developed. Topics of research include also
communication and co-operation between distributed intelligent
agents.
Her research has covered implementation, application and
theoretical aspects and is presented in several national and
international publications. She participated to program committees
of national and international workshops and conferences. She has
been involved in the organization of international events,
workshops and conferences, and she has given tutorials. She took
part to several national (Progetti Finalizzati and MURST) and
international (UE) research projects in the context of
computational logic. In particular, she was involved, as research
coordinator for Bologna University, in COMPUNET EC Network, (where
she took part of the Executive Council), in the Esprit ALPES EC
project in the CRAFT EC project "Paint manufacturing process
optimization for the building industry, using original bases and
pigments formulation" and in the SOCS UE IST project: ”A
computational logic model for the description, analysis and
verification of global and open societies of heterogeneous
computees”.
Within this project, she faced the topic of modeling/verifying
peers interaction protocols, following an approach based on
computational logic.
Then, taking advantage of the past experience, the current
research activity of Paola Mello is also related on the formal
specification and on the automatic verification of (interaction)
protocols, workflow patterns, medical guidelines, Web Services
compositions through the use of declarative languages.
