Cosenza at the heart of Artificial Intelligence in Italy

There have been many advances in modern computing technologies that have resulted in an increase in major breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and the province of Cosenza, Italy is emerging as a key contributor to this sector both domestically and internationally. A majority of the province’s research, articles and scientific advances have come from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Calabria. Professor Nicola Leone, the Director of the Department, along with his team of young researchers and PhD students from UNICAL, received the Best Paper Award for the best scientific article published during the year at the 15th edition of the International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2016), Italy’s most important event in the sector.

The Department’s research focuses on Mathematics and Computer Science, with substantial scientific activities in the macro-sector of both areas. The Informatics macro-sector is an international reference point in the field of artificial intelligence and the University devotes a portion of its research to the theory of databases and knowledge. The department yields great success and results which is demonstrated by numerous publications in the most prestigious international academic journals and by numerous national and international awards. As a result of the SILA project funded by the PON Ricerca 2007-2013 program, the Department created the “LAIA” Laboratory where most of their research on artificial intelligence is conducted.

The Department has created two academic spin-off companies, which continue their work outside of the University.

The DLV SYSTEM s.r.l was founded by professors and researchers from the University of Calabria, University of Oxford and the Technical University of Vienna in 2005, with the purpose of promoting a successful and widely used system for advanced database applications: knowledge representation and reasoning (DLV).

DtoK Lab is also an academic spin-off of UNICAL and is working to enable customers to turn their data into knowledge by delivering scalable solutions for Big Data analysis in business domains using Cloud technologies.

In the last year alone, the province of Cosenza, and more specifically the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at UNICAL, has hosted two annual international conferences on artificial intelligence.

The 18th International Conference AIIA (Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence) which is a non-profit scientific society founded in 1988 focused on artificial intelligence;

The 16th Edition of JELIA (European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence) which began back in 1988, as a workshop, designed to create a European forum that would facilitate the discussion of work in this field.

For the following September, UNICAL has already prepared to host the 36th annual International Conference on Logical Programming (ICLP), chaired by Professors Leone and Greco, who have jointly received an appointment by the international Association of Logical Programming (ALP).

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