Tag Archives: Italy

70 Open PhD Positions in ICT at the University of Trento

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The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) at the University of Trento has 70 open PhD positions in the ICT area, almost all of them covered by scholarship.
The deadline for applications is April 20, 2010, before 12 noon, local time.

The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science is one of the leading and faster-growing research institutions, characterized by a young and international faculty and by a large, international student population. Indicators for scientific production put the department among the very top in Europe. The successful candidate will therefore have the opportunity to work in a dynamic and exciting environment. Trento is a vibrant city with a beautifully preserved historic center, consistently ranked at the top for quality of life in Italy. It offers a variety of cultural and sports opportunities all year around, as well as excellent food and wine.

Scholarship for 1 year in the SoNet group

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Come to work with our research group (SoNet – Social Networking)! Read more at http://sonet.fbk.eu/en/work_with_us

Scholarship available (~1300 Euros after taxes per months).
Deadline: 5 February 2010!

The research activity will be about identifying requirements for a social networking platform for Associazione Trentini nel Mondo Onlus (thousands of people from Trentino who are currently leaving abroad) and in proposing different platforms and adoption strategies, following their deployment (carried out by developers of the SoNet project) and
in evaluating them.
The scholarship is for one year and activity will start 15 March 2010.

Researchers’ Night at Fondazione Bruno Kessler

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Experiments, demonstrations, performances, meetings, exhibitions, guided tours, open workshops and a party to learn all about the world of science.
On September 25, 2009 Trento will be animated by “The Researchers’ night”, an event sponsored by the European Commission and organized by Fondazione Bruno Kessler (where I work) in collaboration with the Istituto Agrario S. Michele all’Adige, the University of Trento, Trentino Sviluppo, the Institute for evaluative research on public policies (IRVAPP), the Municipality of Trento and the Autonomous Province of Trento.

Check the Program and the video on Youtube.
The night will end up with a party and I’m sure you will not miss the opportunity to dance with a researcher! ;)

Children and adults will have the opportunity to understand science by experiencing its day-to-day practices, by frequenting the spaces and places where research is carried out and by coming into contact with its machinery and equipment, but above all by talking to those directly involved. The public participating will be actively involved in hands-on experiments, in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, using also an accessible wording also for non scientists . Each of the venues for the day’s events will plan a “European corner”, providing information on Europe and European interventions in favour of researchers and research.

Through offering the public at large and specifically young people the opportunity to directly get in touch with researchers in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, the Researchers’ Night project not only allows the participants to better understand the input of research in economic growth, employment and competition and in their dally lives, but also offers a unique occasion to discover the “human face” of researchers. While discovering the fascinating aspects of the job, the visitors will also share with researchers their hopes, dreams, hobbies, concerns …and perceive them as “ordinary people”.

In the following the program but you better check the Program on the FBK web site.

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Great opportunity for post-doc positions in the SoNet (Social Networking) Group at the FBK-irst research institute in Trento, Italy.

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Since one year together with my colleague napo, I started and lead a research group in FBK, called SoNet. Our research focus is studying Web2.0 and social networking. You can have a look at our SoNet blog if you are interested (still a bit under construction …)

Well, there is now a great opportunity for post-doc positions in our group here in Trento, Italy.
Find information at http://www.uniricerca.provincia.tn.it/bandi_ricerca_en.asp . If you have any question about the position, please contact me!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the deadline is Monday September 14th, 2009.!

The opportunity
* incoming: funding of individual research projects, both “post-doc” and “team”, promoted by *Italian and foreign researchers* who will carry out the research activity inside Trento province;
* re-integration: funding of individual research projects, both “post-doc” and “team”, promoted by researchers who have been carrying out *research activity in a foreign country for at least three years* and aimed at their possible definitive return to Trentino.

What is SoNet
So Net is a research group inside FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler) research institute. FBK is located in Trento, north-east of Italy, and counts more than 350 researchers in a variety of areas, such as Information Technologies, Materials and Microsystems, and Humanities.
SoNet’s research focus is Social Networking and its impacts: more info at http://sonet.fbk.eu

Research in Trentino, Italy
Trentino is the right place in Italy for research. It hosts a large number of research labs from environmental studies to high-tech technologies. The Province of Trento allocates several resources such as infrastructure, real estate and funds to encourage research and innovation. Many institutes, both public and private, local, national and international have established their research units in Trento and Rovereto. Trentino is located in north-east Italy in a charming area of mountains and lakes.

Please forward this message to anybody who might be interested.

See you soon in Trento!

Trento is the capital of Economics from 29 May to 1 June: two Nobel prizes and much more!

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It is once again time for Trento Festival of Economics!!! The fourth edition of the Festival of Economics will animate the city of Trento from 29 May to 1 June.
Economists, legal experts, entrepreneurs, managers, politicians, sociologists and journalists will come together to publicly debate a central issue for our future: how to conciliate identity and globalisation in a time of crisis.

Economists of indisputable prestige coming from the best universities in the world will help us to clarify our ideas. They include two winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics. The first to participate in the Trento Festival will be George Akerlof, who will explain how important decisions are often inspired by “animal spirits” and how these instincts represent one of the causes of the current recession, with a sudden collapse in trust, a factor which governments will undoubtedly have to take into account. The second economist, James Heckman, will help us to understand how economics and psychology are the key to understanding our identity and personality.

It is possible to follow the Festival of Economics live on the Web TV!
And if you are coming to Trento you can do it with carpooling (search for a ride or offer a ride to Trento. At the OtherEconomy square there will be also a stand of Jungo!, a dynamic carpooling system that we are testing in Trento!
Ah, and I’m going to host someone I totally don’t know via couchsurfing! So, if you are coming to Trento for the festival contact me, I probably can host you as well!
I think carpooling and couchsurfing are two good examples of an economic system that is finally going to change … for the better! Good! I see you around in Trento!

In the following a copy and paste the program of the festival. But you can also download it as a single pdf file (program).

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FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research

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Very interesting retreat at my research institute FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)! Here there is the program of the retreat. There are many uber-interesting invited speaker. Personally I’m really looking forward to listen Prabhakar Raghavan (Head of Yahoo! Research) – USA, Hendrik Berndt (VP & CTO of DoCoMo Eurolabs) – Germany/Japan, Ray Perrault (Director Artificial Intelligence Center – SRI) – USA and Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO and Scientific Director of DFKI) – Germany.
Let me know if you would like to join us!

FBK retreat

New directions for scientific and technological research: a comparison of diverse views
Start: 29/01/2009 – 00:30
End: 30/01/2009 – 19:00
THE FUTURE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH
PRO>RETREAT OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL CENTERS OF FBK
Trento, Italy, January 29-30 2009
(for the schedule of January 28th, see moreover)
Sala Conferenze Ovest, FBK
Via Sommarive 18, Povo (TN), Italy

January 29th (in streaming da giovedi’ 29/01)
9.00-9.30
Welcome & Opening Welcome by Andrea Zanotti (president of FBK)
The FBK Research Programs
Andrea Simoni (Director Center for Materials and Microsystems – FBK)
Paolo Traverso (Director Center for Information Technology – FBK)

9.30-11.00 – Nano & Micro Technologies (1)
Chairs: Pierluigi Bellutti – Head of MTLab, FBK; Lorenzo Gonzo – Head of Smart Optical Sensors and Interfaces, FBK
Bruno Murari (Scientific Advisor ST Microelectronics) – Italy
Peter Seitz (Vice-President Nano-medicine, CSEM SA) – Switzerland

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-13.00 Future Internet (1)
Chairs: Massimo Zancanaro –Head of Intelligent Interfaces & Interaction, FBK; Luciano Serafini – Head of Data & Knowledge Management, FBK
Mark Maybury (Executive Director – MITRE) – USA
Klaus Tochtermann (Director Know-Center Graz) – Austria

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.00 Nano & Micro Technologies (2)
Chairs: Alberto Lui – New Materials and Analytical Methods for Biosensors and Bioelectronics Group, FBK; Leandro Lorenzelli – BioMEMS Group, FBK
Pietro Siciliano (Resp. IMM CNR – Sezione di Lecce) – Italy
David Holden (CEA- Minatec) – France

16.30-18.00 Future Internet (2)
Chair: Marco Pistore – Head of Service Oriented Applications, FBK
Hendrik Berndt (VP & CTO of DoCoMo Eurolabs) – Germany/Japan
Roger Kilian-Kehr (Research Architekt, SAP Research Center CEC Karlsruhe)

January 30th (in streaming da venerdì 30/01)
9.00-10.30 2009 – The Year of Innovation – The Challenges for ICT (1)
Chair: Alessandro Cimatti – Head of Embedded Systems, FBK
João da Silva (Director of the Network & Communication DG-INFSO)
Malik Ghallab (CEO for Science and Technology – INRIA) – France

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Future Internet (3)
Chairs: Marcello Federico & Bernardo Magnini — Heads of Human Language Technologies, FBK
Yuichi Matsushima (Vice President of NICT) – Japan
Prabhakar Raghavan (Head of Yahoo! Research) – USA

12.30-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.30 Embedded Intelligence: Ambient Computing & Intelligent Interaction
Chair: Oliviero Stock – Senior Fellow, FBK

Ray Perrault (Director Artificial Intelligence Center – SRI) – USA
Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO and Scientific Director of DFKI) – Germany

15.30-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-17.30 2009 – The Year of Innovation – The Challenges for ICT (2)
Chair: Paolo Traverso, Director Center for Information Technology, FBK
Lutz Heuser (Vice President of SAP Research) – Germany
Dario Avallone (Director R&D Engineering) – Italy

17.30-19.00 Concluding Remarks – Moderatore: Michele Lanzinger (Direttore Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali)
Lorenzo Dellai – President of the Trentino Autonomous Province
Andrea Zanotti – President of FBK
Andrea Simoni – Director Center for Materials and Microsystems
Paolo Traverso – Director Center for Information Technology
Discussion & Remarks by the Invited Speakers

19.00-20.00 Aperitif

Sala Conferenze Ovest, FBK
Via Sommarive 18, Povo, Trento, Italy
reatreatinfopoint@fbk.eu

PLEASE NOTE: the talks are in English and attendance is upon invitation

As far as the Center for Information Technology is concerned, two additional days are being added to the programme, as follows:

– The first part on Wednesday, Jan. 28, starting from 9 a.m. and dealing with the Trentino Research System
– The second part on Monday, Feb. 2, starting from 9.30 a. m. for FBK researchers only

January 28th (no streaming!)
9.00 – 9.30 Welcome & Introduction — Paolo Traverso Director of the Center for Information Technology, FBK

9.30 – 10.00 Francesco De Natale
Director of the Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell’Informazione (DISI), University of Trento

10.00 – 10.30 Imrich Chlamtac
President of the CREATE-NET Research Consortium

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break

11.00 – 11.30 Raffaele De Amicis
Director of the Center for Advanced Computer Graphics
Technologies (GraphiTech)

11.30 – 12.00 Corrado Priami
President & CEO of The Microsoft Research – University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (CoSBi)

12.00 – 12.30 Remo Job
Dean of Facoltà di Scienze Cognitive, Università di Trento

12.30 – 13.00 Discussion & Concluding Remarks

Coworking in Trento

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CoworkingI’ve been somehow coworking (I just created the page in the Italian Wikipedia which was missing) the past weeks, i.e. I’ve been visiting friends in their offices for meetings and then remaining there for working: when I have an Internet connection I can do my work in any place and visiting other talented people is always a source of new inspirations and fruitful discussions and a more creative way of working and seeing your daily job from different angles and perspectives.
So this post is just to put out there a sort of placeholder: anybody interested in formalizing some coworking spaces in Trento? Anybody maybe already doing it?
(Credits: photo by “hillary h” released on Flickr under Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike license)

Dellai2.0: Italian politics in time of Web

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Dellai 2.0Sunday it was election day here in Trentino. Since Trentino is an autonomous region in Italy, local elections have a much larger impact on the region than national politics. Luckily enough, Lorenzo Dellai won with a large percentage and he will be once more the president of the province. Before the election day, there was the fear of having even here in Trentino a success of Lega Nord, a racist and obscurantist right-wing party.
I’m very happy Lega Nord didn’t win and I believe Dellai and its coalition (left-centre) will keep making Trentino an happy island in the context of Italy, but what interests me the most is the use Dellai made of Internet and Web2.0 phenomena for his campaign.

The tools used by Dellai:

  1. WordPress Blog on WordPress.com http://lorenzodellai.wordpress.com/
  2. Twitter Heavy twittering http://twitter.com/lorenzodellai (it was extremely interesting to read a twitter around every 30 minutes during the campaign: these short messages can give you an idea of what Dellai was doing such as “appena arrivato in ufficio 10:35 PM Nov 6th“, “ritorno in città per l’incontro con il circolo anziani 5:35 AM Nov 5th“, “vado all’incontro sul tema della scuola nella sede di Teatrincorso Spazio 14 in via Vannetti 8:10 AM Nov 3rd”, “Lunga e amichevole telefonata con il collega Luis Durnwalder.”, … Once I read that he was going to meet some people in Piazza Duomo and I had the temptation to go in Piazza Duomo to check if this was true, a strange feeling I must admit
  3. Facebook Facebook www.facebook.com/people/Lorenzo_Dellai/: at the moment Dellai facebook profile has 997 friends. Many of them requested the friendship after the success (in Italy we say “saltare sul carro dei vincitori” (jump on the winners’ bandwagon)) which is interesting as well. While most of the Web2.0 tools were used more as a direct but online communication channel, with Facebook, Dellai tried also to move the online networking to offline discussions. In fact, he organized an real-world aperitif in a bar of Trento. See the Dellai Facebook Aperitif page. This event had 95 confirmed guests and around 80 people (very young on average) shown up in the bar.
  4. Youtube Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/lorenzodellai
  5. Flickr Flickr profile http://www.flickr.com/photos/28475218@N02/ and he even asked to Flickers the permission to report their photos of course respecting their copyright. In the message he even wrote the word “watermarking” which sparked some discussions about the fact Dellai would really know what watermarking is, which is in my opinion very unlikely.
  6. Netvibes and more Even a netvibes page http://www.netvibes.com/lorenzodellai!!! Very Mashuppy!!! A Mashup of all the other tools basically. With for example a public todolist (with done things checked as he was doing them ) and even dopplr (http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/lorenzodellai)!!! And Skype, and google talk, and gmail, and liveblogging events with scribblelive, …

      7. Well, besides this impressive list of Web2.0 tools in use, there are at least 2 interesting points I would like to briefly examine.
      First, is this an example of politics becoming more transparent? I guess the real question should be: “will Dellai keep twittering/facebooking/blogging/… that heavily now that he is elected and, in this way, give to (tech-savvy) citizens a way to follow what he does daily and maybe even contribute with comments and suggestions? If yes, to which level will he dare to push this? Only messages about what he did or posts about strategic decisions even before they are already made?
      Of course maintaining such a structure requires lots of resources, both in term of time (his time and his collaborators time) and money (people working on this aspect mainly since most of the tools used are free to use for now).
      That’s something I’m terribly curious to see how it develops. In the message in his blog after his election, there is a Youtube video in which he states he will keep experimenting with the network (“Adesso la campagna elettorale si e’ chiusa pero’ (…) per me non si chiude l’esperienza della mia presenza nella rete.” and even “abbiamo bisogno della vostra amicizia (little esitation) su facebook”). But I think a twitter every 30 minutes is something he is not going to keep and this is a pity.

      And the second key point is: is it possible to scientifically measure the impact of this approach, of this use of Web2.0 tools on the outcomes of the electoral competition? The more general question would be: can we identify numeric indicators of success? Are there around experiences in this sense? Research labs on Politics2.0 and its quantification? I guess that the are a lot of people working on the campaign of Obama so there might be some work already published (in papers or blogs). Are you aware of any of these?
      The effects should be both on the number of votes collected by online tools, their general impact on the aura of the candidate, the changing relationship of the candidate with traditional media (newspapers, tv), …
      Anybody trying to foreseen how big will be the impact of such strategies in the next elections (let’s say in 5 years)?

      (logo created with http://creatr.cc/creatr/)

The Global Gender Gap Report 2007. Italy? 84th out of 128

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The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 is out.
Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the rankings in the latest Global Gender Gap Report. The Report covers a total of 128 countries.
Ah yes, you are wondering about Italy? Why really wondering? Anything else to do? Uhm, ok here is the raw reality: Italy is 84th out of 128.
Our cousins of Spain are 10th (!), Latvia is in position 13 and Lithuania 14. Moldova is 21, Cuba is 22, Colombia is 24, Bulgaria is 25, Lesotho is 26, Namibia is 29, Tanzania is 34, Vietnam is 42, Romania is 47, Uganda is 50, Botswana is 53, Albania is 66, China is 73
Did I say that if you scroll down down in the list you find Italy in position 84?
So why cannot an NGO of Lesotho comes in Italy to help us with an international cooperation project about gender issues?