Research interests

• Entity-centric web: enabling the vision of the semantic web as a web of entities. The vision is that the web will be populated with self-merging distributed datasets based on a clear identification of entities described in each of them. See How to Publish OKKAMized Data on the Web ...and connect to Linked Data for a comparison of this idea with the concept of linked data.


• Lightweight data integration: entity-centric methods and tools for integrating data (e.g. relational data) without assuming a full schema integration. The idea is to provide fast and reliable techniques for retrieving anything which is known about an entity (e.g. person, location, oranization, product, event, etc.) in a decentralized set of data sources with very high precision and recall.


• Business models for semantic web technologies: understanding how semantic web technologies can effectively improve the way people work and do business today. Really.


• Semantic Coordination: models and techniques for coordinating the use of multiple knowledge sources (e.g. ontologies) in a highly distributed and heterogeneous environment (e.g. peer-to-peer knowledge sharing networks)


• Distributed Knowledge Management: development of models and techniques for supporting the representation, management and sharing of knowledge in organizational settings


• Context-dependent knoweldge representation and reasoning: formal models of how context impact on the representation of what an agent knows about his/her/its world, and the kind of reasoning which can be done on it. Examples of application are: the qualification problem in AI, reasoning about beliefs, belief reports, and semantics of indexical expressions


• Mental models: cognitive background of contextual reasoning and communication. My current research is described in a paper published at CogSci2005 and in a web site on external mental models

Research projects

1. APARSEN: APARSEN is a Network of Excellence that aims to bring together an extremely diverse set of practitioner organisations and researchers in order to bring coherence, cohesion and continuity to research into barriers to the long-term accessibility and usability of digital information and data, exploiting our diversity by building a long-lived Virtual Centre of Digital Preservation Excellence.


2. (Enabling the Web of Entities): OKKAM is a EU funded Integrated project in FP7, which will start in 2008. The overall goal of the OKKAM project is to enable the Web of Entities, a global digital space for publishing and managing information about entities, where every entity is uniquely identified, and links between entities can be explicitly specified and exploited in a variety of scenarios. Compared to the WWW, the main differences are that the domain of entities is extended beyond the realm of digital resources to include objects in other realms like products, organizations, associations, countries, events, publications, hotels or people; and that links between entities are extended beyond hyperlinks to include virtually any type of relation. However, to make this happen, the Web of Entities must trigger (as the WWW did) what economists call network externality effect, and this requires at least three pillars to be in place: (i) a suitable infrastructure which can support the open and sustainable growth of the Web of Entities; (ii) a critical mass of new entity-aware content and data accessible to a very large number of users in a relatively short time; a collection of exemplary and high impact applications, which can prove to the key players in ICT that investing on the Web of Entities is worthwhile. The OKKAM project presents a strategy and an effective work plan to build the three pillars of this Web of Entities, not only from a technical point of view, but also from a social, organizational and business-oriented perspective.


3. VIKEF: the goal of this EU funded Integrated Project is to use Semantic Web languages and tools to create Virtual Information and Knowledge Environments in different application scenarios. My contribution is mainly on the representation and management of semantic information, with special attention to the integration of data (e.g. from text documents) into one or more domain ontologies, and on schema matching. I'm responsible for two project workpackages (WP5 and WP8: Context and Interoperability) and for a so-called Project Competence Area (PCA-4: Semantic representation, management and reuse).


4. Knowledge Web: the goal of this EU funded Network of Excellence is to create awareness on Semantic Web technologies and to deploy theoretical results, language specifications and tools that can foster the adoption of Semantic Web concepts in real applications. My personal contribution is mainly in the area of ontology mapping and alignment. I'm responsible for a project deliverable (D2.2.1: Specification of a Common Framework for Characterizing Alignment)


5. WISDOM (Web Intelligent Search based on DOMain ontologies): an Italian national project funded by the Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR) which aims at developing intelligent techniques and tools, based on domain ontologies, to perform effective and efficient information search on the WEB. I'm responsible for the Unit at the University of Trento, whose main contribution is related to semantic matching across web resources