Panel Discussion

Panel on Mobility:

“The Human Mobility ecosystem in the era of AI”

5 December 2024 (afternoon)

Panel Speakers:

Gil Sampaio is an R&D Engineer at the Centre for Power and Energy Systems at INESC TEC in Portugal, where he leads the Network Operation, Management & Automation division.

His expertise in electrical engineering, optimization, and data-driven approaches has led to the development of solutions now adopted by industry partners, reflecting his dedication to bridging the gap between academic research and practical application.

In addition to working on high-impact international projects in renewable energy and electric mobility, Gil also teaches courses on power systems and smart grids at Universidade Lusófona do Porto.

Michela Natilli Statistician, graduated in Statistics and Economics at University of Siena. She got a master of Science (M.Sc.) from University of Pisa in Big Data Analytics and Social Mining in 2015. Her work focuses on applied data science with particular interests in the design and development of Big Data Analytics experiments for defining and monitoring statistical indicators for complex social phenomena also in a gender perspective. She is the Research Infrastructure Manager of SoBigData.it and she is in the management team of the SoBigData Research Infrastructure, the European Research Infrastructure for Big Data and Social Mining.

Roberto Trasarti is a senior researcher and data scientist with a focus on mobility data analysis and behavioral patterns. He currently works at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and has contributed to numerous international research projects, specializing in the use of Big Data to understand social phenomena. With several scientific publications, Trasarti is a recognized expert in the field of complex data analysis and applied artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining and automatic reasoning. He is member of Knowledge Discovery and Delivery Laboratory, and coordinator of the SoBigData Research Infrastructure (www.sobigdata.eu) and its related projects: SoBigData++ (H2020 GA n.871042) , SoBigData PPP (HORIZON-INFRA ESFRI N.101079043) and SoBigData.it (Italian RRNP n.0000013).

Bruno Lepri is senior researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Trento, Italy) where he leads the Mobile and Social Computing Lab (MobS). He has recently launched the Center for Computational Social Science and Human Dynamics, a joint initiative between Fondazione Bruno Kessler and the University of Trento. Since July 2022, he is the Chief Scientific Office of Ipazia, a new company active on AI solutions for financial services and energy management. From 2019 to 2022, Bruno was also the Chief AI Scientist of ManpowerGroup where he has collaborated with the global innovation team on AI projects for recruitment and HR management. Bruno is also a senior research affiliate at Data-Pop Alliance, the first think-tank on big data and development co-created by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, Overseas Development Institute, and Flowminder. Finally, he has co-founded Profilio, a startup on AI-driven psychometric analysis. In 2010 he won a Marie Curie Cofund postdoc fellowship and he has held a 3 year postdoc position at MIT Media Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Trento. His research interests include computational social science, personality computing, network science, and machine learning. His research has received attention from several international press outlets and obtained the 10-year impact award at MUM 2021, the James Chen Annual Award for best 2016 UMUAI paper, and the best paper award at ACM Ubicomp 2014.

Luca Pappalardo, born in sunny Salerno, Italy, is a senior researcher at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and an associate professor at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. With a degree in Computer Science, Luca started exploring massive datasets of human movements, publishing several papers on human mobility analysis and modelling, some of which became classics of the field. In a natural evolution of his research trajectory, Luca shifted focus to the pressing issue of urban congestion, pioneering efforts centered on designing innovative routing strategies that balance individual travel optimization with the collective well-being of a city. Luca is now broadening his scope to address the profound impact of AI on complex systems in realms like social media, conversational systems, online retail and, of course, urban environments. His overarching goal is to design next-generation algorithms that balance the individual needs of users with broader collective objectives using tools at the intersection of computer science, network science, and computational social science.

Antonio Cerqua: Antonio Cerqua is currently Chief Innovation Officer at Almawave, a company within the Almaviva group specializing in Artificial Intelligence, Data & Location Intelligence. He graduated in Telecommunications Engineering in 2009 at the University of Naples “Parthenope.” He began his career at Almaviva in 2009, becoming head of the IoT Practice in 2015 and head of the “Data, AI & GIS” Practice in 2018.

Throughout his career, he has designed and coordinated the development of products and solutions in key technological areas across various market sectors, such as Defense, Healthcare, Smart Cities, Transportation, Industry 4.0, and Public Administration. He actively participates in Research and Development activities in collaboration with universities and research institutions, in addition to engaging in dissemination efforts on both national and international levels.