About

I aman  Ontologist and a Research Scientist with a wide range of experience across several areas of Computer Science and Information Technology.

My main topics of expertise are Semantic Web Technologies (Ontology development, Data Integration, Enterprise Semantic Web Applications) applied in several fields (biomedical resources, e-learning, multimedia) and Web 2.0 (Social media,  Social Networks,  folksonomy/ontology interaction). Skills and expertise have been gained during 13+ years of experience in industry (as System Administrator, Network Engineer and CTO) and in Academia where, as Research Scientist, he has been constantly involved in large research projects well connected to real world issues.

Detailed resume:

2007 PhD in Computer Science

Media Integration and Communication Center, Universita’ degli Studi di Firenze

2003 Master in Internet Engineering,

Universita’ degli Studi di Firenze

1998 Telecommunication Engineering Degree (Master equivalent, 5 Years degree)

Universita’ degli Studi di Firenze

Professional experience

Oregon Health and Science University-  USA Oct. 2009 - Present

Scientific Data Curator

Responsibilities: WIthin the eagle-i project (https://www.eagle-i.org/home/) I’m responsible for the design and the implementation of the ontologies used for the annotation of biomedical resources.  I’m interacting with PI and developers in order to define ontology requirements and integrate the OWL ontology into the development of the search and data curation applications. The current version of the ontology is available at http://code.google.com/p/eagle-i/.

Cisoft - University of Southern California -  USA Jul. 2008 - June 2009

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Responsibilities: I’m involved in the development and deployment of a large-scale knowledge management system based on Semantic Web technologies for Chevron. Major accomplishments:  I have defined an Ontology for Events in Reservoir Management, and  used rule-based reasoning for event detection and correlation. I have applied for a Patent related to “System and Method for Data Provenance Management” in September 2008.

Simon Fraser University - Canada Aug. 2007 - Jul. 2008

Postdoctoral Fellow

Responsibilities:  In the scope of the LORNET project I conducted research related to  Semantic Web technologies in e-learning with particular focus on  Social Semantic Web. Major accomplishments:  I’ve proposed a novel method of interaction between folksonomies and ontologies in order to easy the ontology maintenance process. I’ve investigated relations between Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web.

Hewlett Packard Labs - UK May. 2006 - Nov. 2006

Visiting researcher

Responsibilities: Development of the Semantic Photo Project. Major accomplishments:  I’ve defined mechanism for discovering, sharing and browsing images based on RDF geo-location metadata shared through SPARQL endpoints.

MICC - Italy Jan. 2002 - Aug. 2007

Researcher / Project manager

Responsibilities: Responsible for several technology transfer projects and principal investigator for the research related to Semantic Web Technologies and Multimedia.

Major accomplishments:  I’ve introduced the novel idea of OWL ontologies enriched with visual concepts, proposed algorithms for multimedia annotation based on enriched ontologies, and developed a set of software tools and visual interfaces for the semantic retrieval of videos.

I’ve also lead the development and deployment of Web applications for Public Administration (E-government solutions based on interoperability and ERP deployment project analysis).

Motoride.com  - Italy Apr. 2000 - Jan. 2002

Chief Technology Officer

Responsibilities: Architecture design and implementation of the network infrastructure, Web application development for the portal.

Major accomplishments: Starting from the vendor and software selection, through system architecture design until Web implementation  I successfully led the deployment and the maintenance of the e-commerce portal based on BroadVision, managing a group of 5 system engineers and developers.

Menarini  - Italy Dec. 1998 - Apr. 2000

System and Network Engineer

Responsibilities: LAN and WAN design, Web sites administration, IT corporate standards compliance.

Major accomplishments:   I’ve successfully led the project of the corporate Web site development and deployment. I’ve followed several European affiliated companies in the transition towards IT corporate standards.

Teaching experience

I developed courses and give lectures in the following topics:

· Web languages and programming, 2006 - Master in Multimedia Content Design, University of Florence, Italy

· Multimedia and Semantic Web, 2005 and 2006 - Module of the Multimedia Database course Computer Engineering Faculty, University of Florence, Italy

· Fundamentals of knowledge representation and Semantic Web, 2005 - Computer Engineering Faculty, University of Florence, Italy

· Information and Communication Technology, 2004 and 2005 - Agriculture Faculty, University of Florence, Italy

· E-government guidelines for Public Administration, 2003 - Master in Communication and Management, University of Florence, Italy

· Instructor for Cisco Networking Academy Program, 2003 - Master in Internet Engineering, University of Florence, Italy

Journal Editorial

· Bertinii M., Devedzic V., Gasevic D., Torniai C. Interactive Learning Environments Journal, Special Issue on “Semantic Technologies for Multimedia-enhanced Learning Environments,” proposal accepted, open call for papers posted, papers currently under review.

Publications

Book Chapters

· C. Torniai, S.Battle, S. Cayzer, “Sharing, Discovering and Browsing Geotagged Pictures on the Web”, in “Geospatial Web. How Geo-Browsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0
are Shaping the Network Society”, Springer, 2007

International Journals

· M.Bertini, R. Cucchiara, A. Del Bimbo, C. Grana, G. Serra, C. Torniai, R. Vezzani “Dynamic Pictorially Enriched Ontologies for Video Digital Libraries”, IEEE Multimedia, forthcoming

· J. Jovanović, D. Gašević, C. Torniai, S. Bateman, M. Hatala, “The Social Semantic Web in Intelligent Learning Environments - State of the Art and Future Challenges -” Special issue on Web 2.0 for Interactive e-learning, Interactive Learning environment, forthcoming

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo and C. Torniai, “Multimedia Enriched Ontologies for Video Digital Libraries”, International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems, January 2007; Vol. 22. No. 6, pp. 407–416.

Magazines

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo and C. Torniai, “Ontologies for Video Digital Libraries” ERCIM News Special Issue on “European Digital Libraries”, Number 66, July 2006, pp. 37

· C. Torniai, “Exploring Maps through Georeferenced Images and RDF Shared Metadata”, Informer, Number 23, Summer 2007, ISSN 0950-4974, p. 6-7

International Conferences

· Jing Zhao, Fan Sun, Carlo Torniai, Amol Bakshi, Viktor Prasanna, “A Provenance-Integration Framework for Distributed Workflows in Grid Environments” Workshop on Grid and Utility Computing (WUGC), Bangalore, December 2008.

· Siadaty, M., Eap, T., Jovanović, J., Gašević, D., Torniai, C., Hatala, M., “Semantic Technologies for Socially-enhanced Context-aware Mobile Learning“, In Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, 2008, pp. 413-418

· Siadaty, M., Torniai, C., Gašević, D., Jovanović, J., Eap, T., Hatala, M., “m-LOCO: An Ontology-based Framework for Context-Aware Mobile Learning,” In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Ontologies and Semantic Web for Intelligent Educational Systems at 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 2008

· Torniai, C., Jovanović, J., Bateman, S., Gašević, D., Hatala, M., “Leveraging Folksonomies for Ontology Evolution in E-learning Environments“, In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 2008, pp. 206-215

· C. Torniai, J. Jovanovic, S. Bateman, D. Gasevic, and M. Hatala, “E-learning meets Social Semantic Web”, 8th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Santander, Cantabria, Spain, 1-5 July 2008

· J. Jovanovic, C. Torniai, D. Gasevic and M. Hatala “Leveraging the Social Semantic Web in Intelligent Tutoring Systems”, International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Montreal Canada, 23-28 June 2008

· S.Bateman, J.Jovanovic, C. Torniai, D.Gasevic, and M.Hatala “Combined Usage of Ontologies and Folksonomies in E-learning Environments”, Semantic Web User Interaction Workshop, CHI 2008, 5-10 April 2008, Florence, Italy

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, R. Cucchiara, C. Grana, “Dynamic Pictorial Ontologies for Video Digital Libraries Annotation”, In Proceedings of the ACM MIR workshop on the Many Faces of Multimedia Semantics, Ausburg, Bavaria, Germany, September 28, 2007, pp. 47 - 56

· A. Bagdanov, M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, G. Serras and C. Torniai, “Semantic annotation and retrieval of video events using multimedia ontologies”, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing ICSC 2007, Irvine, California,17-19 September 2007, pp. 713-720

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, C. Grana, R.Vezzani, R. Cucchiara, “Sports Video Annotation using Enhanced HSV histogram in Multimedia Ontologies”, In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Visual and Multimedia Digital Libraries (VMDL07), Modena, Italy, September 13-14, 2007, pp. 160-167

· C. Torniai, S.Battle, S. Cayzer, “The Big Picture: Exploring Cities through Georeferenced Images and RDF Shared Metadata”, CHI 2007 Workshop “Imaging the City”, San Jose,19 April, 2007

· C. Torniai, S.Battle, S. Cayzer, “Sharing, Discovering and Browsing Photo Collections through RDF geo-metadata”, In Proceedings of SWAP 2006, the 3rd Italian Semantic Web Workshop, Pisa, Italy, December 18-20, 2006, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, online http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-201/42.pdf.

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, R. Cucchiara, C. Grana, “MOM: Multimedia Ontology Manager. A Framework for Automatic Annotation and Semantic Retrieval of Video Sequences”, in Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, Oct. 23-27, 2006, pp. 787-788

· C. Grana, R. Vezzani, D. Bulgarelli, G.Gualdi, R. Cucchiara, M. Bertini, C. Torniai, A. Del Bimbo, “PEANO: Pictorial Enriched ANnotation of VideO”, in Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, Oct. 23-27, 2006, pp. 793-794

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo and C. Torniai, “Automatic Annotation and Semantic Retrieval of Video Sequences using Multimedia Ontologies”, in Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, Oct. 23-27, 2006, pp. 679-682

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo and C. Torniai, “Ontologies for Video Digital Libraries”, In Proc. Of the 7th KDD Multimedia Data Mining workshop report, in conjunction with the 12^th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, August 20-23, 2006 Philadelphia, PA, USA

· M. Bertini, G. D’Amico, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, “Using Knowledge Representation Languages for Video Annotation and Retrieval“, In Proceedings of Flexible Query Answering Systems (FQAS) 2006, Milano, June 7-10, 2006, pp. 634-646

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, C.Torniai, “Video Annotation and Retrieval with Pictorially Enriched Ontologies”, in Proceedings of Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries Management System (IRCDL), Padova (IT), January 27, 2006, pp. 76-79

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, “Automatic Video Annotation Using Ontologies Extended With Visual Information”, In Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia, Singapore November 6-12, 2005, pp. 395-398

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, “Enhanced Ontologies for Video Annotation and Retrieval”, In Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGMM international workshop on Multimedia Information Retrieval (MIR), Singapore November 10-11, 2005, pp. 89-96

· M. Bertini, R. Cucchiara, A. Del Bimbo, C. Torniai, “Domain Knowledge Extension with Pictorially Enriched Ontologies“, 11th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (CAIP) , Rocquencourt, September 5-8, 2005, pp. 652-660

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, R. Cucchiara, C. Torniai, “Video Annotation with Pictorially Enriched Ontologies“, In proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), Amsterdam (NL), July 6-8, 2005, pp. 1428-1431

· M. Bertini, A. Del Bimbo, R. Cucchiara, C. Torniai, “Ontologies enriched with visual information for video annotation“, Multimedia and the Semantic Web Workshop in Conjunction with the 2^nd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Heraklion (GR), May 29, 2005

Tutorials

· Gasevic D., Witte R., Torniai C. “Tools for the Semantic Web: Semantic Web Technologies in Multimedia Enhanced Applications”, 4th Annual LORNET Conference on Intelligent, Interactive, Learning Object Repositories Network, Montreal, November 2007

Patents

· System and Method for Data Provenance Management , co-inventors: Jing Zaho, Fan Sun, Carlo Torniai, Amol B. Bakshi, assignors to Chevron USA Inc, applied September, 2008, USPatentApplication No. 12/275877; Chevron Ref: T-7544

Projects

I have been involved in the Integrated asset Management Project which is part of the joint USC-Chevron CiSoft effort to realize the vision of an integrated, instrumented, intelligent oilfield.

I worked within Delos Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries, funded by the EU Sixth Framework Programme. In particular I’ve been involved in research and coordination activities for the Video Annotation with Pictorially Enriched Ontologies Task.

I’ve also worked in the VIDI-Video EU research project defining techniques to semantic access to video content by means of detection of a large number of concepts.

Program Committees

· International Workshop on Visual interfaces to the Social and the Semantic Web (VISSW 2009)

· IADIS International Conference Web based Communities 2009

· IADIS International Conference - Information Systems 2009

· Workshop on Visual interfaces to the Social and the Semantic Web (VISSW 2009)

· IADIS International Conference - Information Systems 2008

· IADIS International Conference Web based Communities 2008

· SAAKM2008, Semantic Authoring, Annotation and Knowledge Markup Workshop

Reviewer

Books

· S. Dasiopoulou, C. Saathoff, Ph. Mylonas, Y. Avrithis, Y. Kompatsiaris, S. Staab, “Semantic Multimedia and Ontologies: Theory and Applications” Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, September 2007

International Journal

· IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

· IEEE Multimedia

· IEEE Software

· Elesevier Information systems Journal

International Conference and workshop

· ICSOFT 2007

· CIVR 2007

· ACM Multimedia Information Retrieval workshop 2005

· ACM Multimedia 2006 - 2007

· ECDL 2005

Languages

· Italian, English, French

Technical Skills

Semantic Web – Definition, design and analysis of ontologies,. Good knowledge of OWL, RDF, RDFS., SPARQL and Joseki. Very good knowledge of Protégé, and Jena API

Web Development: Very good knowledge of HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, RSS. Very familiar with LAMP sites development. Very good knowledge of Javascript, PHP. Good knowledge of the Adobe CS Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop)

Web Engineering and Networking: Good knowledge of Apache, Microsoft IIS. Very good knowledge of Apache. Certified Cisco CCNA Instructor. Good knowledge of Cisco IOS, Cisco routers and switches configuration and management, design of LAN/WAN

Programming Languages: Good knowledge of C, C++, Java. Good knowledge of XML, XSL, DDT, WSDL