Personale docente

Alessandro Dal Palù received his degree in Computer Science from the University of Verona on July 10, 2002, graduating with highest honors (summa cum laude) and receiving a special mention from the examination committee in recognition of his outstanding academic record. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science (18th cycle) from the University of Udine on March 31, 2006.

Following research appointments at Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) and New Mexico State University (USA), he joined the University of Parma in December 2005 as an Assistant Professor (tenured researcher) in the Scientific Disciplinary Sector INF/01 – Computer Science. Since October 1, 2014, he has been an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Mathematical, Physical and Computer Sciences, University of Parma. During the Spring semester of 2011, he also served as Visiting Professor and Research Collaborator at New Mexico State University.

Professor Dal Palù's research activity lies within the broad field of Artificial Intelligence, with particular emphasis on Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Computational Logic, Knowledge Representation, and Declarative Programming. His research also encompasses bioinformatics, multidimensional image analysis, high-performance computing, GPU computing, and the application of artificial intelligence to modeling, biomedical, and industrial problems. Throughout his career, he has made significant contributions to Constraint Logic Programming, Answer Set Programming, automated reasoning, protein structure prediction, biomedical image analysis, and the development of parallel and high-performance algorithms.

His scientific contributions have been recognized through several prestigious awards, including the "Marco Cadoli" Award, presented by the Italian Association of Logic Programming (GULP) for the best Ph.D. dissertation in Computational Logic (2007), the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2010) for the paper CLP-based Protein Fragment Assembly, and the Best Practical Impact Paper Award at the Italian Conference on Computational Logic (CILC 2020) for the paper An ASP Approach for Arteries Classification in CT Scans.

He has held several prominent scientific and organizational roles within the international research community. He served as Program Co-Chair of the International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2018), was a member of the Executive Committee of the Association for Logic Programming from 2014 to 2020, and has served on the Program Committees of major international conferences, including ICLP and IJCAI. He has also promoted and co-organized numerous editions of the Workshop on Constraint Based Methods for Bioinformatics and has been serving as Guest Associate Editor of Frontiers in Bioinformatics since 2022.

At the University of Parma, Professor Dal Palù has undertaken significant academic leadership responsibilities. He served as Coordinator of the Bachelor's Degree Programme in Computer Science from 2017 to 2024 and of the Master's Degree Programme in Computer Science from 2020 to 2024. He was the promoter and principal designer of the new Master's Degree Programme in Computer Science, launched in the 2020/2021 academic year. He currently serves on the Departmental Research Evaluation Committee, the Departmental Quality Assurance Committee, and the University Committee for Student Dropout Prevention.

His teaching activity includes undergraduate and graduate courses in Computer Science at the University of Parma, including Operating Systems, Computer Architecture, Parallel Programming and High-Performance Computing, Algorithms and Data Structures Laboratory, Constraint Programming, and Declarative Programming. He has also taught in doctoral schools and international training programs, including the SISSA Doctoral School and the CILC Summer School, contributing to advanced education in Computational Logic and High-Performance Computing. Throughout his academic career, he has supervised more than one hundred Bachelor's theses, several Master's theses, and Ph.D. students in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Computational Logic, High-Performance Computing, and Explainable Artificial Intelligence.

During his career, Professor Dal Palù has coordinated numerous competitively funded research projects supported by INDAM-GNCS, PRIN, and other national funding programs, frequently serving as National Principal Investigator. He has also led several industrial research projects in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Industry 4.0, multispectral and satellite image analysis, and biomedical data processing, establishing long-term collaborations with industrial partners and promoting the transfer of advanced AI technologies into real-world applications.