I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Milan, advised by Paolo Boldi and co-advised by Sebastiano Vigna, as a part of the Laboratory of Web Algorithmics in February 2017.

My PhD dissertation investigated what makes some things more likely to be connected than others. I developed computational methods to study complex networks in which each node has a large number of attributes (or features), and to infer how combinations of these features make connections more or less likely.

For instance, in a network of scientific publications, we can investigate which research topics tend to attract citations from one another, and which rarely interact. Or, in a network of Wikipedia articles, we can study how different types of subjects are interconnected. By uncovering these patterns, we can identify which groups of features matter most in shaping a network, but also detect unusual connections that deviate from what we would expect. Such anomalies can be particularly interesting: they might reveal surprising associations, overlooked relationships, or unexpected ways in which knowledge is organized.

If you're interested, here's

• My presentation slides
• My thesis [pdf, 161 pages, 6.1M]
• The articles I published from the thesis.