Description:

The Computer Engineering staff people as a whole, carry on both research and teaching activities, which are related to different fields such as Advanced Computer Architectures, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Robotics, Robot Programming, Artificial Consciousness, Expert Systems, Knowledge Representation, Decision Support Systems, Computer Vision, Image Processing, Systems in support of Medical Diagnosis, Human-Computer Interaction, Cyber Security, Distributed Systems, Networking, Multimedia and Hypermedia Systems, Agent Systems, Software Engineering, Deep Learning, Genetic Algorithms, Soft Computing, and Big Data.

The various research groups are a solid cultural and scientific reference for the both graduate and PhD students in Computer Engineering, and for the economic actors in the regional territory where a huge increase in Informatics is foreseen as a strategic asset for enterprise development. All the groups collaborate with many Universities both in Italy and abroad, and PhD students have many opportunities to study in foreign countries. Finally, Computer Engineering people collaborate with different Sicilian Institutions through purposely signed agreements.

Main research fields:

• Medical Image Processing, e-Health, and Computer-aided Drug Design: deep learning architectures for Virtual Screening of kinase-active chemical compounds using their molecular fingerprints, with applications to oncological therapy. Registration, and segmentation of CT/MR/PET volume data to assess the presence of tumor lesions. Data driven auto-organizing GUIs for PACS viewers/workstations.
• Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, and Machine Learning: image, and video processing for Computer Vision with application to video surveillance, video analytics, and content-based video/image retrieval. Novel algorithms for tracking, and characterization of events/actions/emotions from 360° videos. Deep learning techniques for generating immersive virtual reality from indoor 360° videos.
• Autonomous Robotics, and Human-Robot Interaction: development of “social robots”, which interact with humans using bio-feedback also. Software agents architectures for implementing the concepts of trust, inner speech, awareness, and theory of mind in the NAO, Pepper, and Telenoid humanoid robots.
• Distributed Systems, and Cyber Security: this research area includes: detection of cyber threats through social networks analysis, in order to detect malicious behaviours; recognition of malicious software through machine learning techniques; secure Distributed Reputation Management Systems; Internet-of-Things; multi-sensor data fusion; Participatory Sensing.
• Artificial Intelligence: this research area includes: integration of symbolic and subsymbolic models for knowledge representation; uncertain reasoning through Bayesian Networks; design of autonomous systems exploiting Machine Learning and Deep Learning technique; User Profiling; Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Coordination; Ambient Intelligence.

Ongoing Research Projects:

• “I-MALL - improving the customer experience in stores by intelligent computer vision”, PRIN 2017
• “IDEHA: Innovazioni per l’elaborazione dei dati nel settore del patrimonio culturale”, PNR 2015-2020
• “ARES - Robotica autonoma per la nave estesa”, PON2014-20_MIUR - PON Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020 MIUR
• “RESPECT - Robot innEr SPEeCh for Trust”, Air Force Office of Scientific Research – US GRANT
• “VASARI - VAlorizzazione Smart del patrimonio ARtistico delle città Italiane”, PNR 2015-2020, DD MIUR n. 2511 del 01.10.2018
• “SMART DAMPER”, MISE - Bando Horizon 2020 - PON 2014/2020 Fondo per la Crescita Sostenibile (FCS).
• 2 PhD grants funded by PON “Ricerca e Innovazione” 2014-2020, Azione 1.1: Dottorati innovativi con caratterizzazione industriale.

Keywords: Computer Engineering, Research.