Associate Professor at the University of Bologna since 2023, he conducts research in the field of inference, optimization, and machine learning, with a special focus on methods derived from statistical physics and the theory of disordered systems in particular.
Education
He obtained his MSc in Physics (cum laude) in 2011 from the University of Salento and obtained his Ph.D. in Physics in 2015 from the University of Pisa.
Academic Career
After a two-year postdoctoral contract at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas in Rio de Janeiro, where he worked in the group of Constantino Tsallis, he worked from 2017 to 2019 in the group of Giorgio Parisi at the Department of Physics of Sapienza University of Rome. During 2020, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the IdePHICS group, led by Florent Krzakala, first at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris and later at EPFL. On January 1, 2021, he was appointed as a Lecturer in Disordered Systems at King's College London. Since October 2, 2023, he has been an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna.
Visiting positions
2024 (18 Sept — 18 Oct) Visiting professor at LIPN Paris, hosted by Dr Andrea Sportiello, Paris (France).
Teaching Activities
2021 — 2023 Stochastic processes and applications, MSc in Complex Systems Modelling, King's College London
2021 — 2023 Foundations of complex systems modelling, MSc in Complex Systems Modelling, King's College London
2022 — 2023 Probability & Statistics II, BSc in Mathematics, King's College London
2023 — 2024 Analisi Matematica T-2, corso di Architettura–Ingegneria, Università di Bologna
2023 ➔ Meccanica razionale, corso di Architettura–Ingegneria, Università di Bologna
2024 ➔ Fisica Matematica 2, corso di laurea in Matematica, Università di Bologna
Students' supervision & theses
See personal website.
Scientific Activities
He has collaborated with, among the others, Sergio Caracciolo, Carlo Lucibello, Giorgio Parisi, and later Andrea Sportiello on an investigation of random matching problems, a problem with deep connections to the so-called optimal transportation problem. He has also worked on mean-field models for the density of states of amorphous solids in the context of the Simons Collaboration Cracking the Glass Problem. Finally, since 2021, he has been involved in inference and machine learning problems to be investigated using methods from statistical physics. In 2023, he serves as the editor of the volume "Spin Glass Theory and Far Beyond," alongside Patrick Charbonneau, Enzo Marinari, Marc Mézard, Giorgio Parisi, Federico Ricci-Tersenghi, and Francesco Zamponi.
Institutional Activities and Academic Roles
From 2021 to 2023, he organized the Colloquia series at the Department of Mathematics at King's College London. He has co-organized numerous scientific events, including the 73rd edition of the British Mathematical Colloquium at King's College London and the conference "40 Years of Replica Symmetry Breaking" at Sapienza University of Rome. He is currently member of the "Terza Missione" Commission of the Mathematics department.
Grant
In 2021, he was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action – Individual Fellowship for Statistical Physics of Optimal Transportation (SPOT), project number 101022304 (24 months). However, he declined it due to incompatibility with the position of Lecturer at King's College London.
Academic qualifications
2020 Italian qualification for Associate Professor MAT07 Mathematical Physics.
2020 French qualification Maître de Conference Section 26: Mathématiques appliquées et applications des mathématiques.
2020 French qualification Maître de Conference Section 28: Milieux denses et matériaux.
2023 Fellow of the British Advance HE, formerly the Higher Education Academy.
2024 Abilitazione italiana a Professore Associato FIS02 Fisica Teorica.
Service for ML/AI Conferences
Area chair at NeurIPS (2024), ICML (2025).
Referee for the major machine learning/AI venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR...)
Co-organized conferences
2023 Analytical approaches for neural network dynamics, Paris (France).
2023 Disordered systems days, London (UK).
2022 The many facets of Statistical field theory, a conference in honor of Sergio Caracciolo at SISSA, Trieste (Italy).
2022 47th Conference of the Middle European Cooperation in Statistical Physics (MECO47), Erice (Italy).
2022 73rd British Mathematical Colloquium, London (UK).
2019 40 years of Replica Symmetry Breaking, Rome (Italy).
2018 Disordered serendipity: a glassy path to discovery, Rome (Italy).
2018 Beyond Mean Field Theory: Renormalisation Group and Non Perturbative approaches to Disordered and Glassy Systems, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome (Italy).
Invited talks
2024 Rockin'AI, Roccella Jonica (Italy).
2022 Youth in High-Dimensions: Recent Progress in Machine Learning, High-Dimensional Statistics and Inference, ICTP, Trieste (Italy).
2021 Combinatorial probability virtual opening workshop inference, SAMSI (USA — Online).
2020 Recent progresses in glassy systems, Les Houches (France).
2019 People in optimal transportation and applications, Cortona (Italy).
Invited talks at LISN Paris (2024), LIPN Paris (2024), ICMAT Madrid (2019), ENS Paris (2018, 2019, 2024), King’s College London (2018).
