I studied math at the University of Padova (Bachelor), logic at Indiana University (Master) and knowledge representation at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (PhD). Since 2019 I'm head of the Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA). My research develops in the areas of information and social systems where logic, artificial intelligence and cognitive science overlap. I like to start with an ontological approach to clarify the domain and to identify the problem. You can see this, for example, in my work on engineering function and product modeling and, for a different domain, on space representation. In general, I like to work with people with different backgrounds because I'm attracted to interdisciplinary topics.
I've given tens of invited talks at conferences and universities. Typically, people ask me to talk about applied ontology and how it can be used in some domain or context. I've been active in about 30 national and international projects. As most people, I didn't like all of them, but they often spark some interesting ideas and problems to think about. Today I'm member of the Editorial Board of the journal Applied Ontology, the Semantic Web Journal, the Advisory Board of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA), the Industry and Standards Technical Committee of IAOA, and the steering committees of JOWO, Womocoe, Shapes and FOUST.
