Fran Casino

Ramón y Cajal Fellow, IEEE Senior Member

Rovira i Virgili University | Athena Research Center

Fran Casino Cembellín (Tarragona, 1986) is a member of the teaching and research staff in the Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics at Rovira i Virgili University (URV) (Tarragona, Spain), and in Athena Research Center (Athens, Greece). He obtained his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science in 2010 and his M.Sc. degree in Computer Security and Intelligent Systems in 2013, both from URV. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from URV in 2017 with honours (A cum laude) as well as the best dissertation award. He completed several stays in international research institutions for more than five years, including ISCTE-IUL (Portugal), the University of Piraeus and Athena Research Center, both in Greece.

He has participated in several national and international projects covering different tasks such as proposal writing, research, development, testing and validation, and dissemination. He has actively participated in European projects such as SAFEHORIZON (GA 101168562), ALUNA (GA 101084929), LAZARUS (GA 101070303), CTC (GA 101036276), HEROES (GA 101021801), LOCARD (GA 832735), YAKSHA (GA 780498), OPERANDO (GA 653704), PRACTICIES (GA 740072), MITIGATE (GA 653212), GAME-ABLING (FP7-SME-2012-1-315032) and national projects such as SIMPATIC (RECERCAIXA 2013-2015), ARES (CONSOLIDER INGENIO 2010), and CO-PRIVACY (TIN2011-27076-C03-0).

His most recent interests are aligned with several European projects in which he is participating, namely LAZARUS, HEROES, and CTC. He is investigating and developing novel tools to ease digital forensic investigations by combining different technologies such as intelligent data acquisition models, natural language processing, computer vision and cognitive learning. Moreover, he has contributed to creating multiple blockchain-based architectures applied to different fields such as criminal investigation, supply chain, finance, smart health and recommender systems. Some of his contributions have received several awards in first quartile research journals (i.e., articles included in the most cited list of the International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis, and Telematics and Informatics, Elsevier), and others are being exploited at European level.

His research has an interdisciplinary focus and combines several knowledge areas with disruptive technologies. Some keywords related to his research are pattern recognition, cognitive security, data management, privacy protection, cybercrime and digital investigations, recommender systems, supply chain, and blockchain. He has authored more than 70 publications in peer-reviewed international conferences and journals. He is senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and he was listed in the World’s Top 2% most influential Scientists of his field by the Stanford University.