Francesco Tortorella
Professore di Sistemi di Elaborazione delle Informazioni
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e dell'Informazione
Università degli Studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale
"Oggi ogni ramo della scienza sembra che ci voglia dimostrare che il mondo si regge su entità sottilissime: come i messaggi del DNA, gli impulsi dei neuroni, i quarks, i neutrini vaganti nello spazio dall'inizio dei tempi ...
Poi, l'informatica. E' vero che il software non potrebbe esercitare i poteri della sua leggerezza se non mediante la pesantezza dell'hardware; ma è il software che comanda, che agisce sul mondo esterno e sulle macchine, le quali esistono in funzione solo del software, si evolvono in modo d'elaborare programmi sempre più complessi. La seconda rivoluzione industriale non si presenta come la prima con immagini schiaccianti quali presse di laminatoi o colate d'acciaio, ma come i bits d'un flusso d'informazione che corre sui circuiti sotto forma d'impulsi elettronici. Le macchine di ferro ci sono sempre, ma obbediscono ai bits senza peso."
Italo Calvino, Leggerezza da Lezioni americane, Mondadori, 2000.
"Today every branch of science seems intent on demonstrating that the world is supported by the most minute entities, such as the messages of DNA, the impulses of neurons, and quarks, and neutrinos wandering through space since the beginning of time ...
Then we have computer science. It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware. But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more complex programs. The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with 'bits' in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits."
from Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Lightness)
Vita
Francesco Tortorella received a degree summa cum laude in Electronic Engineering in 1991 and a Ph. D. Degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering in 1995, both from the University of Naples , Italy. From 1995 to 1996, he obtained a post-doctoral fellowship by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) for researches in parallel computing. From 1996 to 1998 he obtained a post-doctoral fellowship by the University of Napoli “Federico II” for researches on classification techniques. In 1998 he joined the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Cassino, Italy, where he is now Professor of Computer Science.
Prof. Tortorella has authored over 100 research papers in International Journals and Conference Proceedings and has served as referee for many international journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Pattern Recognition Letters, Pattern Analysis and Applications, Information Fusion, Signal Processing. He served as Guest Editor of a special issue of Pattern Recognition Letters on ROC Analysis in Pattern Recognition, June 2006 and Guest Editor of a special issue of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine on Pattern Recognition and Knowledge Discovery in Medical Systems, 2009. He is currently on the Editorial Board of Pattern Recognition Letters (Elsevier) as Associate Editor. He co-chaired (with Paolo Soda) the 25th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS 2012) held in Rome, Italy, on 20-22 June 2012. He has been on the program committee of many important international conferences and workshop on statistical pattern recognition, image analysis, medical image analysis.
Prof. Tortorella is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR).
He was the coordinator for Information Engineering program at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio from September 2008 to October 2015. Currently, he is the Italian coordinator for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program in Medical Imaging and Applications (www.maiamaster.org).
Research
My research activity focuses on machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision, image analysis and processing. I have been working on general techniques for statistical classification, neural networks, medical image analysis and understanding, document analysis, shape analysis and description. My current research interests include deep learning, medical image analysis, techniques for reliable classification, statistical learning, multiple classifier systems, two-class classification. On these topics I have authored several papers in international refereed journals and conferences. You can find references for part of them in the Publications page
Teaching
My teaching activity has been focused on programming techniques and computer architectures for undergraduate degree, on computer vision, pattern recognition and machine learning for postgraduate degree (both Master and Doctorate). You can find some material (in Italian) for my courses in the Teaching page.
Contacts
Università degli Studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e dell'Informazione
via Di Biasio, 43
03043 Cassino (FR), Italy
Email: francesco.tortorella@unicas,it
Phone: +39 0776 2993605