The successful story of informatics ad University of Calabria. Interview with Prof. Nicola Leone.
Prof. Nicola Leone, full professor in Computer Science and director of department of Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Calabria, represents a great example of successful ideas in both basic and applied research as demonstrated by numerous awards: in 2009 at Providence (NY, USA), Nicola Leone received the eminent "Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award" for one of the best scientific articles with highest impact on research in 10 years; in 2012 at Montpellier (France) Nicola Leone was recognized as "ECCAI Fellow" by the “European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence"; the H-Index of his publications is 45 and, for this reason, Nicola Leone has been included in the rank of the best Italian scientists (Via Academy).
Prof. Leone declared: “Awards are results of academic studies, career, works, collaborations. I have studied mathematics here, at University of Calabria. Then, I started working with an Italian Agency (CRAI: Consorzio per la Ricerca e l’Applicazione Informatica) where I moved to informatics. After a while, I have accepted a fellow at the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche). This represented, for my professional life, a keystone because opened the collaboration with Vienna University of Technology were I was professor for 6 years (1995 – 2000). In 2000, I was back in Calabria and, in this University, I founded thebachelor and the master in informatics, the PhD programme in mathematics and computer science. I am very proud of my group, constituted by brilliant scientists, which has been recognized as excellent in the field of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).”.
These success have been shared with Faculty of Science that helped Prof. Leone when arrived at University of Calabria to build up his own group. Informatics is not a ‘cold science’, Prof. Leone indeed declared that: “Imagination is important particularly to solve basic research problems. This is the reason why I have received the prize in 2009 in USA. In that moment, in fact, we were able to solve a scientific problem controversial for more than 30 years”. Still imagination is the reason that moved Prof. Leone to accept the great challenge to leave the prestigious University of Vienna and to come back to Italy: “Since I was able to be part of a great research group in Austria, the biggest challenge at that moment of my professional life was to build up a research group with international breath also here in Calabria where I was born and grew up”.
To reach such important results Prof. Leone acknowledged his mentor at University of Vienna, prof. Georg Gottlob, now at Oxford University: “The most important results achieved during my career concern theoretical studies, as demonstrated by the award of 2009. However, the activity of my group is more famous for one important applied study, that has led to the development of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) system, called DLV. The implementation of DLV has started when I was still in Vienna, in collaboration with research groups worldwide. This system has broad applications, it somehow allows to ‘program the brain of a robot’ to make planning, diagnosys, scheduling, and many other database and AI applications. DLV allowed to focus a specific research area and around these results my group has developed. Indeed, I started working on this idea when I was in Vienna and since I moved to Calabria I brought my ‘research son’ in Italy and because of the importance of this application, part of my group in Vienna followed me here. Now DLV is used worldwide: DLV technology has been tested for driving space shuttle at NASA, integration of synchrotron experimental data at CERN of Geneva, data cleaning, diagnosis, planning and a lot of other different implementations. This project gave big importance to my group but also to whole University ”.
The possibility of making research in informatics is guaranteed by the great advances in technology: “It’s a good moment to be an expert in informatics. In particular, Artificial Intelligence studies require an incredible amount of calculations which now are possible thanks to new improved hardware. Artificial Intelligence takes more and more place in daily life, let’s think about smart cities or intelligent vacuum cleaner etc.. ”.
In conclusion the recipe of Prof. Leone to became a researcher in informatics: “In Calabria, as well as in Austria I met great and motivated students able to solve difficult problems. It’s important however to highlight that to became a researcher and not only a technician is important to have passion. The way is hard, students need to be determined, opened to cross-talk with international scientists. It is important for a young researcher to know his own possibilities but, at the same time, to be humble enough to keep learning and studying for the whole life. The most important characteristic for a researcher is the ability to stay in a group, to collaborate honestly, to share ideas and experiences.”
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