Personale docente

Francesco Zanichelli is an Associate Professor with the Department of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Parma where he is currently teaching the Information Systems course in the Master Programme of Computer Engineering (for which he is also responsible of Quality Assurance) and the Operating Systems course in the Undergraduate Programme of Computer, Electronics and Telecommunications. Current research interests are related to distributed systems and to middleware for service oriented peer-to-peer systems, to cloud platforms for the Internet-of-Things and predictive maintenance as well as to blockchain-based security applications.
Francesco Zanichelli received the Dr.Eng degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Bologna and obtained a research grant from IBM Italy in the area of industrial robotics at the same university. In 1993 he spent a research period at the University of Florida to work on mobile robotics. In 1994 Francesco Zanichelli received his Ph.D. degree in Information Technologies at the University of Parma.
In 2015-2018 Francesco Zanichelli was the University of Parma’s Rector Delegate for Digitalization and Process Dematerialization. Francesco Zanichelli has been the Programme Coordinator for the 8th edition of the International Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science – Digital Library Learning, whose partners are Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Tallinn University and University of Parma. He was also the local Programme coordinator for the 7th edition as well as a teacher for the Access module. He is currently coordinating the participation of the University of Parma and is member of Technical and Scientific Committee for the IFTS “Tecnico per la progettazione e lo sviluppo di applicazioni informatiche per la Fabbrica digitale” course organized by CISITA Parma and funded by Emilia Romagna region.
Francesco Zanichelli is member of the Doctoral School Committee of the Doctorate School of Information Technologies at the Department of Engineering and Architecture and has been the Thesis Supervisor for several Ph.D. students.
The research activity of Francesco Zanichelli was initially focused on intelligent robotics, in the areas of software control architectures and of sensor-based interaction for manipulator and mobile robots, as wells on real-time systems. Most significant results were achieved in the fields of programming models and environments for semi-autonomous robot systems and of adaptive algorithms for soft real-time scheduling.
Current research activity is oriented to cloud and peer-to-peer architectures, middleware and applications, as well as on mobile and pervasive information systems. Particular attention has been devoted to models, architectures and middleware for distributed information system and multimedia delivery with mobile systems, such as mobile cloud computing systems. Performance evaluation is achieved through simulation analysis, by emulation on the PlanetLab testbed and by means of prototypes. Among the most important scientific results achieved so far notable are:
- Advanced methodologies for the integration, access and search of services and contents in the Grid for multimedia e-learning applications;
- Innovative techniques and tools for a massively scalable decentralized representation of position information for nodes in the same area, sharing location-based services;
- Modeling and realization of a middleware endowed with autonomic capabilities for large-scale, distributed pervasive systems, and particularly for ambient intelligence applications;
- Novel architectural models for service-oriented P2P networks which have been evaluated with a new, general-purpose discrete-event simulator (DEUS).
The research activity, resulting into over 80 international journal and conference papers, has been carried out in the framework of several regional, national and international research programmes, such those funded by region Emilia-Romagna, the national Research Ministry, NATO and the European Commission. Francesco Zanichelli leads the Distributed Systems Group (DSG) of the UniPR Department of Information Engineering (http://dsg.ce.unipr.it). Francesco Zanichelli is the local coordinator of the University of Parma participation to the CINI National Laboratory for Smart Cities and Communities. He is member of the Steering Committee GTTS7 for the national Cluster on the Intelligent Factory.He is Principal Investigator of the University of Parma participation to PlanetLab Europe. Francesco Zanichelli was the the Director of UniPR Co-Lab Interdepartmental Center of the University of Parma. Applied research and technology transfer activities have been performed in several projects with multiple companies.
Among research projects, notable are:
• 2005-2006 regional research project STIL concerning a virtual, ICT-enabled logistic pole. Francesco Zanichelli served as the Security Work Package leader.
• 2007 – national research project (PRIN 2006) “PROFILES” (PeeR-to-peer beyOnd FILE Sharing) .
• 2007 – NATO NC3A funded research project on a P2P mobile service oriented solution. Francesco Zanichelli was the scientific responsible for the project.
• 2008 – FP7 PERSONA project (Perceptive Spaces Promoting Independent Aging - Ambient Assisted Living in the Ageing Society).
• 2008-2011 – FP7 EU PERFORM project (A soPhisticatEd multi-paRametric system FOR the continuous effective assessment and Monitoring of motor status in Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases).
• 2009-2011 – FP7 EU VPH2 project (Virtual Pathological Heart for the Virtual Physiological Human). 2016-2017 Progetto Security protocols for the Cloud-oriented Internet of Things (SeCIoT) - Programma Galileo Italia-Francia.
• 2017-2019 - Progetto ERASMUS+ NAVIGATE “Information Literacy: A Game-based Learning Approach for Avoiding Fake Content”

Francesco Zanichelli served as a reviewer for multiple international conferences and journals and is an IEEE Member.

Papers: https://scholar.google.it/citations?hl=it&user=FFQFe60AAAAJ&view_op=list...