Curriculum Vitae

Position: Full Professor in Statistics

Status and place: full time at the University of Pisa

I am Full Professor in Statistics at the University of Pisa, Ph.D. in Applied Statistics.

Personal information

Date of Birth: May 17, 1973; 

Citizenship: Italian; 

Researcher ID: F-8282-2018; 

ORCID: 0000-0002-4160-9387; 

URL for web site: https://people.unipi.it/nicola_salvati/ or https://unimap.unipi.it/cercapersone/dettaglio.php?ri=4969&template=dettaglio.tpl   

Scopus web site: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=12645849000; 

Research gate web site: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicola_Salvati

Education

2001 – 2004 Ph.D. Degree in Applied Statistics, XVI course. Department of Statistics ‘G. Parenti’, University of Florence, Florence, Italy. Dissertation Topic: ‘Spatial correlation in small area estimation’. Supervisors: Prof. Monica Pratesi and Prof. Alessandra Petrucci.

1993 – 2000 University Degree in Economics. Department of Statistics and Mathematics Applied to Economy, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. Dissertation Topic: ‘Demographic forecasting in small area estimation’ Advisor: Prof. Marco Bottai.          

Research fields

His research interests include small area estimation, robust regression, quantile and M-quantile regression, multilevel models, survey sampling, model-assisted and design-based inference, spatial statistics, poverty mapping, new technologies in survey methodology, causal inference. His work the in the last five years has been published by Journal of the Americal Statistical Association,  Journal of Royal Statistical Society Series A, B and C, Statistics in Medicine, Annals of Applied Statistics, Statistical Methods in Medical Research, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, International Statistical Review.

My areas of research and impact

In my career, I have been influential in opening up and consolidating a research agenda on small area estimation. In particular, my interest is in small area estimation with M-quantile and latent variable models to estimate poverty measures. Moreover, my research interests include survey sampling, model-assisted and design-based inference, robust regression, multilevel models, geographically weighted regression, spatial statistics, new technologies in survey methodology, Big Data.My research has been published in top tier international journals, including: 3 Journal of Royal Statistical Society Series B; 1 Journal of the American Statistical Association T&M; 8 Journal of Royal Statistical Society Series A; 3 Journal of Royal Statistical Society Series C; 1 Annals of Applied Statistics; 3 Statistical Methods in Medical Research; 1 Statistics in Medicine; 1 Statistics & Computing; 3 International Statistical Review; 2 Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment.

Teaching activities

I taught courses in Statistics (since 2007), Survey Sampling (since 2006), Social Statistics and Data Analysis with R (since 2020) at the University of Florence and Pisa (undergraduate). The average value of the students’ evaluations of teaching (from 0 to 4) is around 3.1 for Statistics, 3.6 for Survey Sampling and 3.7 for Data Analysis with R. I taught Ph.D. courses in ‘Small Area Estimation’ at University of Florence and Naples (from 2008 to 2017). I am a member of the board of the PhD in Economics (University of Perugia) and I’m teaching Ph.D. course in ‘Small Area Estimation’ at University of Perugia since 2018.

Publications in peer-reviewed journals – the most important 

As my CV and my list of publications demonstrate, I have had a highly productive research career. My research output includes 97 articles in peer reviewed international journals, 16 chapters in international books, 3 publications in Italian, and numerous other minor publications (about 90) like reports for international organizations (FAO), or conference proceedings and working papers. I have written publications with colleagues at different stages of their career, including PhD students. My work has been cited 3787 times in GoogleScholar (24/08/2025), where my h-index is 33 and i10-index is 77. I have got the following bibliometric indices: h-index Scopus: 24, h-index WOS: 24, RI-score: 1534 (24/08/2025). I have 57 published paper level A in ASN list.

Salvati’s research agenda and networks

My appointment at the University of Pisa is in Methodological Statistics and I am an inter-disciplinary scholar. My work is connected/contributes to and bridges across methodological statistics, poverty analysis, economics and social statistics, statistical machine learning, casual inference. 

My publication records as well as participation in events and conferences demonstrate active involvement in all these statistical communities, also reflecting the evolution of my research agenda over time. Most of my earlier achievements were in the area of statistical methodology for poverty mapping, while more recently have become interested in developing new statistical methods based on latent variable models for estimating parameters in case of linkage data and casual inference. This is a pioneering research and I’m among the first scholars to bridge these two areas of inquiry to develop a novel inter-disciplinary research agenda. In the last two years I have started a new research to develop new statistical machine learning algorithms and neural networks to predict financial and economics outcomes. This new field of research was born out of my collaboration with Ferrero S.p.A.


I have established a lot of international collaborations. The most important are with Ray Chambers, Centre for Statistical and Survey Methodology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia.; Hukum Chandra, Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, Library Avenue, PUSA, New Delhi 110012, India; Nikos Tzavidis, Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK; Timo Schmid, Otto Friedrich University Bamberg, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Feldkirchenstraße 21, 96045 Bamberg, Germany; Partha Lahiri, Director, Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland.
 

Fellowships and awards

2024 Winner of the 2024 Hukum Chandra Memorial Prize, awarded by the International Association of Survey Statisticians.

2022 Vincitore del BIHO 2022, Bando Incentivi di Ateneo Horizon Europe e Oltre, Università di Pisa. 

2017 Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale, a professore di I fascia, settore 13/D1 - Statistica dal 31 Marzo 2017. 

2017 ‘Fondo di Finanziamento per le Attività Base di Ricerca’ (FFABR) 2017 funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research to support researchers in all fields.

2016  Best Paper Award, University of Wollongong.

2011  Young Research Award 2011 funded by the University of Pisa.

2005 VisitingUniversity of Southampton, Dept. Of Social Sciences: Social Statistics & Demography, March 2005.

2004 VisitingUniversity of Southampton, Dept. Of Social Sciences: Social Statistics & Demography, January-February 2004.

Keynote addresses and invited talks (a selection)

I have been invited to present my research at the following major conferences:

• 'Hukum’s work on outlier robust SAE and Non- stationarity spatial models for SAE
'. RASTA 2022, 23-27 February, 2022, India.

• 'A spatially nonstationary Fay-Herriot model for small area estimation'. SAE2021, 20-24 September, 2021, Naples, Italy.

• 'Controlling Representative Outlier Bias of M-Quantile Model-Based Small Area Estimators
'. ICES-VII,  14-17 June, 2021, Virtual Conference.

• 'Robust Causal Inferences in Small Area Estimation'. CMStatistics, 14-16 Decembre, 2018, Pisa, Italy.

• ‘Outlier Robust Small Domain Estimation Via Bias-Correction And Robust Bootstrapping’. ICES-V 2016, 20-24 June, 2016, Genèvè, Switzerland.

• ‘Estimation of poverty indicators: a comparison of small area methods at LAU1-2 level in Tuscany’. New Techniques andTechnologies for Statistics (NTTS), 18-20 February, 2009, Bruxelles, Belgium.

• ‘Borrowing strength over space in small area estimation using M-quantile geographically weighted models’. ERCIM’08, 19-21 June, 2008, Neuchatel, Switzerland. 

Invited Speaker (only conference in the interest of space): COMPSTAT 2021; LinStat’2020; 62nd ISI World Statistics Congress (2019); JSM2018; ITACOSM2017; SIS2016; Statistical inference for assessing and monitoring natural resources (2016); ITACOSM2015; Cladag2015; SAE2014; GEOMED2013; SAE2013; Graybill Conference, 2013; ICES-IV 2012; RSAI2012; 58th World Statistics Congress (2011); CLADAG2011; Spatial data methods for environmental and ecological processes, 2011; SAE2011; ITACOSM2011; SIS2010; RSS 2009; SAE2009; ITACOSM09; SIS2008; SIS2007; Spatial data methods for environmental and ecological processes, 2006; SIS 2005; S.Co. 2005; European Conference on Quality and Methodology in Official Statistics; S.Co. 2003. 

I was invited for presenting the following seminars:

• Seminar entitled 'A Nested Error Regression Model with High-Dimensional Parameter for Small Area Estimation',  IASS Webinar 45, October 30, 2024.

• Seminar entitled ‘Robust Analysis of Linked Sample Data’, IASS Series Webinar, 15 December, 2021.

• Seminar entitled ‘M-quantile Models for Discrete Data’, University of Genèvè, Switzerland, 24 May, 
2014, Genèvè. 
 

• Seminar entitled ‘An M-quantile Random Effects Model for Hierarchical Data’, Università degli 
Studi di Perugia, 20 October, 2010, Perugia. 


• Seminar entitled ‘S.A.M.P.L.E. project: Small Area Methods for Poverty and Living Condition Estimates. The new regional policy in Research and Innovation and the participation of the University of Pisa in the first calls of the VII Framework Programme.’ Tuscany Region, Brussels Representation, 2008, Bruxelles, Belgium.

• Seminar entitled ‘Small Area Estimation: Spatial EBLUP. A Case Study: Rathbun Lake (Iowa – USA)’. Social Sciences Department, University of Southampton, 2004, UK.

 Leadership potential and International projects 

I am the Director of the Scientific Committee of the Tuscan Interuniversity Research Centre – Camilo Dagum on Advanced Statistics for the Equitable and Sustainable Development – ASESD. I have developed managerial skills through my experience as national or local unit PI and as research member in a number of financed national and international projects. My research is supported by National and international research programmes funded by the European Union's 7th Framework Programme, Horizon 2020 and the Italian Ministry of University and Research. Among others:

• 2024-2025 Principal Investigator, Progetto Bando a Cascata PNRR, Metodi di stimA per Piccole aree per la Povertà Educativa (MAPPE), Bando a Cascata Spoke 0 e Spoke 2 Partenariato Esteso Growing Resilient, INclusive and Sustainable (GRINS) - PE0000018.

• 2023-2025 Co-Principal Investigator, Project PRIN, Quantification in the Context of Dataset Shift (QuaDaSh). 

• 2019-2023 Research member, LOCOMOTION Low-carbon society: an enhanced modelling tool for the transition to sustainability, G.A. no. 821105 (Horizon 2020).


• 2017-2021 Research member, InGRID-2 Integrating Research Infrastructure for European expertise on Inclusive Growth from data to policy, G.A. no. No 730998 (Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme).

• 
2018-2019 Principal Investigator, Progetto di Ricerca di Ateneo PRA_2018_9 From survey- based to register-based statistics: a paradigm shift using latent variable models.
2013-2017 Research member, InGRID Inclusive Growth Research Infrastructure Diffusion, G.A. no. 312691 (SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME - Capacities).


• 2014-2016 Co-Principal Investigator, Project PRIN, Household wealth and youth unemployment: new survey methods to meet current challenges, Project no. 2012F42NS8. 

• 2012-2014 Research member, e-Frame European Framework for Measuring Progress, G.A. no. 290520 (SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME - DG Research and Innovation, Theme 8, Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities). 

• 2008-2011 Research member, Small Area Methods for Poverty and Living Condition Estimates G.A. no. 217565 (SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME - THEME FP7-SSH- 2007-1 Socio- economic sciences and the Humanities Part 8). 

• 2008-2009 Research member, Project PRIN, Inferenza con informazione ausiliaria carente: il campionamento da popolazioni elusive e la stima per domini non pianificati, Project no. 2007RHFBB3_003. 

· I obtained various grants to organize the international conferences: Workshop on Quantile and M- quantile regression models, Pisa, 13-14, July, 2016; Workshop Measuring progress at a local level, Livorno, May 2015; ITACOSM2011, Pisa, 27-29 May 2011; Small Area Estimation 2007, Pisa, 3-5 September 2007. 

Third party activities


2024-current Scientific Coordinator of the Agreement with Assoconcerti for conducting a survey on the economic impact of live music and for supervising the development of statistical models for predicting the economic impact

2018-current Principal Investigator ‘Convenzione con Ferrero S.p.A.’ to teach training courses in the field of statistics and supervision for the development of statistical models for the analysis of food data.

2017 Co-Principal Investigator of a project with Toscana Promozione Turistica for the analysis of the economic impact of musical events of the Lucca Summer Festival on the Tuscan territory.