Giovanni Adorni was born on March 26, 1952. He received the Dr. Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa (Italy) in 1976. He was Associate Researcher at the Electrical Institute and the Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences (DIST) of the University of Genoa, from 1977 to 1987; Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Trent until 1990, working also as a Visiting Scientist at Thinking Machines Co. (Boston, MA) on massive parallel computation for autonomous navigation. He joined in 1992, as Full Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, the School of Engineering of the University of Parma. He joined in 1999, as a Full Professor of Computer Science, the Sc... read more

Giovanni Adorni was born on March 26, 1952. He received the Dr. Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Genoa (Italy) in 1976. He was Associate Researcher at the Electrical Institute and the Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences (DIST) of the University of Genoa, from 1977 to 1987; Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Trent until 1990, working also as a Visiting Scientist at Thinking Machines Co. (Boston, MA) on massive parallel computation for autonomous navigation. He joined in 1992, as Full Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, the School of Engineering of the University of Parma. He joined in 1999, as a Full Professor of Computer Science, the School of Science of Education of the University of Genoa. He is presently a Full Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Polytechnical School of the University of Genoa.

At the University of Trent (1987-90), professor Adorni has been promoter of CUD - Consorzio Università a Distanza, a national on-distance blended learning program, contributing to the activation of the University Diploma on Computer Science.

At the University of Parma (1990-99),  professor Adorni has been:

• Representative of the Rector for “Information and Communication Technologies”, coordinating also the activities of the NETTUNO Consortium (national consortium for “on-distance learning”);
• Member of the Board for the Scientific Research of the Ateneum;
• Director of the Diploma Degree in Computer Engineering and Telematics of the School of Engineering;
• Founder of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence of the Department of Computer Engineering.

At the University of Genoa, professor Adorni has been:

• Representative of the Rector at CRUI for “ICT e E-Learning” e Coordinator "eLearning Program" of the University of Genoa (1999-2004);
• Representative of the Rector at CINI, Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l'Informatica (2013-18);
• Vice-President and Member of the Board of the Faculty of Science of Education (2000-08);
• Member of the Board of the Polytechnical School (2015-18);
• Vice-President and Member of the Board of ISICT - Istituto Superiore di Studi in Tecnologie dell’Informazione e della Comunicazione, of the University of Genoa (2015-2019);
• Promoter of the First Level Laurea Degree of Science of Communication, of the Second Level Laurea Degree of Science and Technology of Communication and Information (elearning blended program);
• Director of the First Level Laurea Degree of Science of Communication from 2001 to 2003 and from 2012 to 2015;
• Promoter of the Laurea Magistralis on Digital Humanities and Director of this Laurea Degree since 2015.
• Director of two e-learning programs: the University Master on “E-Learning for School, University and Enterprise”(masterelearning.unige.it), and the University Specialization Program on “EPICT - European Pedagogical ICT Licence” (www.epict.it).
• Founder of the Laboratory on E-Learning and Knowledge Management(www.elkm.unige.it) at DIST (now DIBRIS).

He has been also Member of the Board of Directors of the Telematics University eCampus during the 2006-2008 start-up period.

Giovanni Adorni spent also different periods as Visiting Professor at:

• School of Computer Science of the University of San Sebastian (Spain),
• Istituto per gli Studi Semantici e Cognitivi dell'Università di Ginevra (Svizzera),
• Department of Computer Science dell'Università di Linkoeping (Svezia),
• Department of Brain and Cognitive Science del MIT,
• Dipartimento di Computer Science del MIT (Cambridge - USA),
• Thinking Machines Co. (Boston), - Department of Neural Computation dell'Università di Ulm (Germania).

His research activities are in the area of multi-agent systems, cellular automata, computer vision, web technology and e-learning.

He coordinated several national research programs on artificial intelligence, computer vision and robotics and e-learning; among them:

• the Special Programs SIAD (AI Systems for the Management of Distributed Knowledge) by the CNR - National Research Council (1998-2000),
• SENSI (Intelligent Sensors) by ENEA - National Agency for Alternative Energy (2000-03),
• IS-MANET (Distributed Software Infrastructure for Hazardous Environments) by CNR and MIUR - Italian Ministry of Scientific Research (2003-08),
• E-Learning on CampsOne by CRUI - Conference of the Rectors of Italian Universities (2001-04) (www.campusone.unige.it/azione-1d/index.html),
• coordination of the National Cluster of Robotic Vision by ASI - Italian Space Agency (1999-04),
• coordination of Azzurra Robot Team by CNR (1999-2001) (robocup.ce.unipr.it) a national program to coordinate activities and games in the framework of the RoboCup international activities,
• coordinator of A.TE.N.A. Project PON-FSE 2014-2020 Liguria Region (2020-21).

He also participated to different European programs, including:

• ESPRIT P419 “Human Movement Understanding”,
• the seven years EUREKA PROMETHEUS project, where he has been the national coordinator and member of the European steering committee for the PRO-ART sub-project (www.ce.unipr.it/computer_vision/mob-lab.html),
• SPA Leonardo da Vinci Program, the “ePict” E-Content Program(www.epict.org),
• "SCORE" MED Program(www.scoremed.eu),
• "DigitalHearth" Program (www.digital-Hearth.eu),
• "eCONTENT EPICT - European Pedagogical ICT Licence",
• “MigraCode - A European Network of Code Scholls for Refugees and Migrants”, ERASMUS+ KA2,
• "Reacti-VET - Teachers for Reactive and Responsive Vocational Education", ERASMUS+ KA2.

He received, among others, the European Artificial Intelligence Prize on Cognitive Modelling (ECAI, 1984) , the Systems Research Foundation Award in recognition of his research on “knowledge based planning” (National Science Foudation, USA, 1988), the Outstanding Award at the XXXVI International Conference on Communication for the activities on “putting AI on board of the car of the future” in the framework of PROMETHEUS project (1988), the silver medal during RoboCup 1999 (Stockholm), the silver medal during EuroRobocup 2000 (Amsterdam), and the Innovation System Award on Mobile Agents (CIA, 2001). He has been appointed as Fellow of European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence in 2004, becaming "Fellow" of EurAI - European Association for Artificial Intelligence in 2015.

He is Italian Representative of the Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence (TC12) of IFIP - International Federation for Information Processing since november 2016.

He has authored and co-authored over 250 scientific papers in international journals, contributed volumes, and conference proceedings, and of a E-Learning platform, published on SourceForge with GPL licence, compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 of the Web Accessibility Initiative of W3C, in the guidelines of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of the United States of America and to those of the Study on the guidelines illustrating the technical requirements and the different levels of accessibility and the technical methods to verify accessibility of the CNIPA – National Centre for Information Technology in Public Administration, which were included in the Implementation Decree of the Stanca Law (www.eiffe-l.org).

Co-founder of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA), he has been Vice President of AI*IA. He has been the Chair of the European Consortium “EPICT - European Pedagogical ICT Licence” (2010-2012). He is President of AICA - Italian Association of Computer Science. He is a member of SIE-L, AAAI and AI*IA.