IMT Alti Studi Lucca - Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies
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Description

The Computer Science and Applications Research Area supports a broad research agenda in the two main fields of Computer Networks and Architectures and Software Systems for Global Computing.

The themes covered include, but are not limited to: advanced communication paradigms for future internet, architectures for model driven software development, complex systems, economically principled growing model of the internet, formal methods for software validation and verification, greening of the future internet, infrastructure-free communications and self-organization, model checking, orchestration and coreography languages, probabilistic and stochastic interactive models and logics, process calculi and high level languages for global computing, wireless enabled context awareness.

The research groups integrate the efforts of professors, researchers, and PhD students in both theoretical and applied problems, involving a wide range of topics and methodologies, with a strong collaborative and interdisciplinary approach.

Research Units/Projects

Research Units are created within and across the Research Area to meet the evolution of frontiers of scientific research, combining scientific rigor and relevance in research activities id high relevance for applications and policy.
Research Units can host one or more research projects.

Current research units:
  • C3 − Culture, Communication & Computing:
    The C3 unit, Culture, Communication & Computing design unit at the IMT Lucca aim at conducting and design innovative research, technologies and application to explore new paradigms related to cultural heritage, to rethink how innovative technologies can improve users' activities & experiences, and generate new concepts to enrich the user experience in the context of cultural heritage. With a strong design approach, we are interested in exploring the emerging paradigms to combine the cultural, the social and the physical space. We research the emerging potentialities of mobile computing, context awareness, new narratives and environmental monitoring techniques.
    The C3 unit is financed by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca.
    Director: Federico Casalegno
  • IEE − Industrial Energy Efficiency
    The IEE Unit aims to develop methods, tools and algorithms for the monitoring and for the modeling and analysis of systems for energy production, co-production, consumption, acquisition and distribution, with particular reference to industrial energy efficiency.
    The IEE unit is financed by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca.
    Director: Rocco de Nicola
  • PRIAn - Pattern recognition and image analysis
    The PRIAn unit aims at applying a wide range of techniques to identify complex patterns in high dimensional data, collaborating closely with experimental groups in various domains, with particular reference to biological and medical images.
    Director: Angelo Bifone

Advisory Board

Coordinator
  • Martin Wirsing - Institut für Informatik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany)
Members
  • Michel Cosnard, INRA, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - Sophia Antipolis (France)
  • Tony Hoare, Microsoft Research, Cambridge (UK)
  • Robert Kahn, Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Reston, VA (USA)
  • Carlo Ratti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

News and Upcoming Research Seminars

From May 23, 2012, 16:00 To 17:30, Ex Boccherini − Conference Room
Generation of test data structures using Constraint Logic Programming
The goal of Bounded-Exhaustive Testing (BET) is the automatic generation of all the test cases satisfying a given invariant, within a given bound. When the input has a complex structure, the development of correct and efficient generators becomes a very challenging task. In this talk we show how to use Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) to systematically develop generators of structurally complex test data. Similarly to filtering-based test generation, we follow a declarative approach which allows us to separate the issue of(i)~defining the test structure and invariant, from that of (ii)~generating admissible test input instances. This separation helps improve the correctness of the developed test case generators. However, in contrast with filtering approaches, we rely on a symbolic representation and we take advantage of efficient search strategies provided by CLP systems for generating test instances. Through some experiments on examples taken from the literature on BET, we show that CLP, by combining the use of constraints and recursion, allows one to write intuitive and easily understandable test generators. We also show that these generators can be much more efficient than those built using ad-hoc filtering-based test generation tools like Korat.
  • Valerio Senni
    Università degli Studi di Roma - Tor Vergata
From May 24, 2012, 16:00 To 17:30, Ex Boccherini − Conference Room
Adventures in Interval Temporal Logics
Temporal reasoning plays a main role in many areas of computer science and artificial intelligence. In most cases, time points are assumed to be the basic ontological temporal entities. However, they are not suitable to properly reason about real-world events with an intrinsic duration. During this talk, we explore a different approach to temporal reasoning, based on the notion of time interval. The family of Interval Temporal Logics (ITL), including logical formalisms supporting interval-based temporal reasoning, is introduced, with a look at the philosophical and practical reasons behind its relvance for temporal reasoning. We summarize the problems that have been addressed in the last decade, with a special focus on satisfiability and expressiveness issues, and outline future research direction
  • Dario Della Monica
    Háskólinn í Reykjavík
From May 29, 2012, 14:00 To 15:30, Ex Boccherini − Conference Room
Models, Traffic Models, Simulation and Traffic Simulation
Simulation is a technique that can be seen as a sampling experiment on a dynamic real system through a computer model formally representing it. Simulation assumes that the evolution of the system’s model over time properly imitates the evolution over time of the modeled system. Thus, samples of the observational variables of interest are collected. From these samples, conclusions on system behavior can be drawn by using statistical analysis techniques. Building models of systems and using them to make decisions is based on well established methodological grounds, specially in dealing complex systems, as in the case of traffic systems. Microscopic simulation of traffic systems has proved to be a successful approach to represent them in terms of models that emulate traffic flow dynamics through the dynamics of its elementary components, the individual vehicles. This seminar will present an introductory overview of model building processes, its application to traffic systems and the fundamental concepts on how to validate and use them in a decision support framework.
  • Jaume Barcelò
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
From May 30, 2012, 16:00 To 17:30, Ex Boccherini − Conference Room
Algebraic Synchronization Trees and Processes
The study of recursive program schemes is one of the classic topics in programming language semantics. One of the main goals of this line of research is to define the semantics of systems of recursive equations such as F(n) = if iszero(n) then 1 else n * F(n-1). In this talk, I will consider recursion schemes from a process-algebraic perspective and view them as a way of defining synchronization trees. In particular, I will investigate the relative expressive power of regular and algebraic recursion schemes over two signatures, which are based on those for Basic CCS and Basic Process Algebra, as a means for defining synchronization trees up to isomorphism as well as modulo bisimilarity and language equivalence. Amongst other results, I will present a generalization of a celebrated result by Bergstra and Klop to the effect that the process describing the behaviour of a bag over a two element data set is not definable in BPA with recursive definitions. I will also compare the expressiveness of algebraic recursion schemes to that of the low levels in the classic Caucal hierarchy of infinite graphs. The talk is based on joint work with Arnaud Carayol (LIGM, Universite' Paris-Est, CNRS, France), Zoltan Esik (Institute of Informatics, University of Szeged, Hungary) and Anna Ingolfsdottir ((ICE-TCS, School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Iceland). This work will be presented at ICALP 2012. The extended abstract is available at http://www.ru.is/faculty/luca/PAPERS/algsynchICALPfinal.pdf
  • Luca Aceto
    Háskólinn í Reykjavík
Please check the Computer Science and Applications Research Seminars page for past seminars.

Current Conferences

No current conferences to display

Past Conferences

From April 12, 2010 To April 15, 2010
European Wireless 2010
From November 7, 2006 To November 9, 2006
Trustworthy Global Computing, 2006 International Symposium

Resident Faculty

Professors
Alberto Bemporad  
Rocco De Nicola rocco.denicola@imtlucca.it
Assistant Professors
Maria Grazia Buscemi m.buscemi@imtlucca.it
Alberto Lluch Lafuente alberto.lluch@imtlucca.it
Panagiotis Patrinos panagiotis.patrinos@imtlucca.it
Francesco Tiezzi  
Sotirios Tsaftaris  
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Daniele Bernardini  
Matteo Rubagotti  
Visiting Professor
Michele Loreti  

In addition to resident faculty, IMT faculty is extended to external scholars who collaborate with IMT on regular basis through a series of activities, mainly:
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