MERCORIO FABIO

Current Positions

• [March24-present] Full Professor at University of Milan-Bicocca
• [2022-present] Director of the Bicocca’s Master in BI and Big Data Analytics, Italy
• [2010-present] Member of CRISP Research Centre, Milan, Italy

Past Positions

• [Dec2021-Feb2024] Associate Professor at University of Milan-Bicocca
• [2020-Ago2023] Deputy Director of the CRISP Research Centre, Italy
• [2016-Nov2021] Assistant Professor at University of Milan-Bicocca
• [2011-2016] PostDoc at University of Milan-Bicocca
• [2017-2018] Partner at TabulaeX Ltd (formerly spin-out company of Unimib) working on BI and Big Data Analytics. TabulaeX is now LightCast
• [2015-2016] Visiting Researcher at King’s College London, AI Planning Group, UK

My research interests include

• Artificial Intelligence: explainable AI, interpretable models, local and global interpretation, explanation through symbolic approaches, fairness.
• Data Science: Big Data Analytics, ontology Learning, word embedding evaluation, Large Language Models
• AI Planning [formerly]: domain-independent planning, temporal continuous planning, planning in mixed discrete-continuous domains, planning in hybrid domain

(Co)-Developed Tools for Researchers

• MERLIN is a global, model-agnostic, contrastive explainer for any tabular or text classifier. It provides contrastive explanations of how the behaviour of two machine learning models differs. It is available as a python tool on Github. Related papers: [Decision Support Systems 2023]
• ContrXT is a model agnostic, global, time contrastive explainer for any text classifier. It is available as a python tool on Github. Related papers: [Information-Fusion-22]
• TaxoRef is a methodology for Taxonomy Refinement via word embeddings. It allows evaluating the best embedding on the basis of their ability to represent taxonomic similarity relations. Related papers: [ECML-PKDD-21]
• GraphDBLP is a tool that models (and enriches) DBLP as a graph database for performing graph-based queries and social network analyses. Related papers: [ECML-PKDD-19], [MTAP-18]
• UPMurphi is a tool for planning with linear and nonlinear continuous PDDL+ models with processes and events. It also handles huge state spaces through a disk-based algorithm. Related papers: [ICAPS-09], [Applied Intelligence 2012]
• DiNo A Planner built on top of UPMurphi that employs graph-based heuristics to speed-up the plan synthesis (leaded by “Planning Group” at King’s College London). Related papers: [IJCAI-16]

Education

• [2012] Ph.D. in Computer Science and Applications, Department of Computer Science, University of L’Aquila, Italy. Topics: AI Planning, Model Checking, and Data Quality.
• [2008] Master Degree in Computer Science and Application University of L’Aquila, Italy. Advisor: prof. Giuseppe Della Penna and prof. Daniele Magazzeni. Topics: AI Planning Control Theory and Model Checking. Maximum score/summa cum laude.

Awards

• [2019] Research Talent Award I’ve received the first prize at the YoungTalentAward 2019 in collaboration with Accademia Nazionale Lincei in the Computer Science, Engineering & Mathematics area. “for his contribution on applying AI to labour market for describing and predicting labour market phenomena”
• [2017] FFABR Research Grant for research productivity provided by Italian Ministry of research “Finanziamento annuale individuale delle attività base di ricerca” [Grants provided on a competitive basis aimed at funding research activities]
• [2014] Best Paper Award at the Third International Conference on Data Technologies and Applications, Vienna, Austria, 29-31, 2014
• [2013] Best Paper Award at the Third International Workshop, Human Computer Interaction – Knowledge Discovery 1-3 Luglio, Maribor, Slovenia, 2013

Service in International Journals (Selection)

• (AICom) Associate Editor of AI Communications
  Reviewer for (selection):
• Artificial Intelligence
• Cognitive Computation
• Applied Soft Computing
• Applied Intelligence
• Future Generation Computer System
• Knowledge-Based Systems
• Computers in Industry
• Expert Systems with Applications

Program committee membership (Selection)

• (AAAI) AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (since 2016)
• (IJCAI) International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (since 2016)
• (ICAPS) International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (since 2016)
• (ECML-PKDD) European Conference on Machine Learning and Data Mining (since 2020)
• ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (since 2018)
• Data Technology and Application Conference (since 2014)