Alessandro Agostini

I have been an active researcher in Artificial Intelligence (Learning Theory; Multi-Agent Systems) since the beginning of my Ph.D. program, apart from a three-year gap (2005- 2007) of coaching in teamsports. Most recently, I am also involved in international consultancy within the ICT and Education industry.

 

My biography of computer scientist is centered on the mission to discover and reduce the “semantic gap” between users’ knowledge and knowledge implemented in knowledge-based distributed systems. My research work has mainly been in Learning Semantics of Coordination (and other inter-actions dynamics such as cooperation, negotiation, interoperability, advertising,...), which is concerned with the development and analysis of mathematical structures that model coordination (such as computable agents and interaction) using ideas and tools from Learning Theory and game-based principles, with a view to the development of methods and algorithms for finding (in an automated way) the possible interpretations of the semantics of knowledge that eventually lead to successful inter-actions dynamics. 

 

Research interests: Game-based (“gamified”) learning systems, diversity in innovation, multi-agent systems, knowledge-based systems, semantic search and retrieval, network science.

 

Teaching: I taught at international B.Sc./M.Sc./Ph.D. levels the following courses, among others: Logics in Computer Science; Artificial Intelligence; Complexity; Theory of Computation; Automata Theory; Database Systems; Database Design; Operations Research; Discrete Mathematics. Other courses were: Introduction to Information Technology; Web Search and Information Retrieval; Software Engineering, Management Information Systems; Professional Ethics in IT, Methodology of Research.

 

 

Timeline

Alessandro Agostini received his laurea (M.Sc. degree) in computer science from the University of Milan in 1992. Soon after graduation, in 1993, he won the AI*IA Prize awarded by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence for the best thesis in Artificial Intelligence written by an Italian young graduate—the first graduate to win the prize in the Italian North-East.

 

From 1995 to 2000 he worked for the Ph.D. Program in Mathematical Logic and Theoretical Computer Science (LOMIT) at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Siena under the supervision of Professor Franco Montagna†, one of the foremost Italian logicians. After spending six months at Oxford University Computing Laboratory studying logic in the Logical Foundations of Computer Science group run by Dr. L. A. Wallen and Dr. L. Ong, in 1999 he moved to Amsterdam for one and an half year research visit at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation of the University of Amsterdam, where he worked on his Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Professor Dick de Jongh, the last but one research student at Madison of Stephen Kleene, one of many distinguished students of Alonzo Church.

 

In June 2001 he joined ITC-IRST’s Automated Reasoning Systems Division in Trento, where he worked on coordination-based and logic-based paradigms of distributed knowledge management within the multi-million euros project Edamok. Successively, he joined the Faculty of Science of the University of Trento, Trentino, Italy, as Adjunct Professor of Logic and Computer Science.

 

At the end of 2007 he visited for three months the Computing Science Department of the University of Aberdeen, invited and hosted by Dr. Jeff Pan. The visit opened a new research collaboration with Dr. Pan in the areas of fuzzy description logics and the Semantic Web.

 

In Fall 2008 he visited for three months the Documentation Research and Training Centre of the Indian Statistical Institute, in Bangalore, where he taught a series of guest lectures on the application of logic and game-based paradigms to knowledge-based systems, the latter paradigms being the subject of an ongoing dissemination project on the use of games and “gamification” for economic, social and cultural growth on the widest scale.

 

In 2009–2012 he was Associate Professor of Computer Science at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, in Saudi Arabia, where he worked on course and curricula developing, quality assurance for international accreditation, student advising, college guidance and leadership.

 

Since 2013 he investigates the myriad roles that diversity plays in ICT and the use of game thinking in non-game contexts, especially in the sectors of education and learning systems. 

 

Currently, Dr. Agostini  enjoys the freedom of research, teaching and traveling in a fairly remote, multi-ethnic and beautiful land of Central Asia.