Roberto Di Pietro Editor & Author

Dr. Roberto Di Pietro, ACM Distinguished Scientist, is Full Professor in Cybersecurity at HBKU-CSE. Previously, he was in the capacity of Global Head Security Research at Nokia Bell Labs,  Associate Professor (with tenure) of Computer Science at University of Padova, and Assistant Professor (with tenure) at University of Roma Tre. He began his career serving for 10+ years in the military---8 years as état-major senior military officer within the Italian Carabinieri Army. Overall, he has been working in the information security field for 25+ years, leading both technology-oriented and research-focused teams in the private sector, government, academia, and international organizations (United Nations HQ, EUROJUST, IAEA, WIPO). His main research interests include security and privacy for distributed systems (e.g. Blockchain technology, Cloud, IoT, online social networks), virtualization security, applied cryptography, intrusion detection, computer forensics, and data science. Other than being involved in M&A of start-up---and having founded one (exited)---, and leading as PI a few high impact international research projects, he has also matured an extensive strategic consultant experience on cybersecurity topics. He has been producing 240+ scientific papers and patents over the cited topics, has co-authored two books, edited one, and contributed to a few others. In 2011-2012 he was awarded a Chair of Excellence from University Carlos III, Madrid. In 2020 he received the Jean-Claude Laprie award for having significantly influenced the theory and practice of Dependable Computing.
Simone Raponi is currently a 3rd year Ph.D. Student in Computer Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar. He is a teaching assistant of Cyber Security and an active member of the HBKU Cyber-Security Research Innovation Lab, headed by Prof. Roberto Di Pietro. He received both his Bachelor and his Master's Degree with honor in Computer Science at Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, on topics strictly related to applied Security and Privacy. In 2018 he joined Iberdrola Qatar and Telefonica Research Barcelona for 2 months as machine learning scientist intern. His major research interests include Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Privacy.
Maurantonio Caprolu is currently a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He is a teaching assistant of Cyber Security and an active member of the HBKU Cyber-Security Research Innovation Lab, headed by Prof. Roberto Di Pietro. He received his master’s degree with honors in Computer Science at Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, on topics strictly related to applied Security and Privacy. He worked several years as an IT consultant for Telecom Italia, Rome. In 2016, he joined as a senior programmer the European Antitrust Forensic IT Tools Project, headed by the University of Roma Tre and the Italian competition authority (AGCM). He participated at the NATO Locked Shields 2017, the world’s largest and most advanced international technical live-fire cyber defense exercise, as a member of the Italian Blue Team coordinated by the Italian Minister of Defense. In 2019 he joined Iberdrola as a research assistant for a 3-month internship that aimed at integrating blockchain-based solutions in the context of smart grids. His research interests span several areas of cybersecurity, which include blockchain technologies, software-defined networking, cryptocurrencies, edge/fog architecture, and computer forensic.

Stefano received his PhD in Information Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2018. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Engineering respectively in 2007 and 2013 and a post-graduate Master's degree in Big Data Analytics & Social Mining in 2016, from the University of Pisa. Currently, he is a Researcher at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the National Research Council (IIT-CNR) in Pisa, Italy. His professional experiences encompass both national and international collaborations with renowned institutions such as the Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Doha, Qatar), Nokia Bell Labs (Paris, France), ISTI-CNR (Pisa, Italy), and the LARTTE Laboratory of the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy). His interests broadly fall at the intersection of Web Science and Data Science, and include the following topics: social media analysis and mining; online social networks security; information disorder; artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science; crisis informatics. Stefano published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers on these topics on top conferences and journals in these fields. In 2018, he was selected among the winners of a SAGE Ocean Concept Grant. In 2019, he won the IEEE Computer Society Italy Section Chapter 2018 PhD Thesis Award and the IEEE Next-Generation Data Scientist Award. He was selected and invited to participate to the 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum. He is member of the IEEE and of the ACM.