Stefano A. Cerri

He graduated in Physics, specializing in electronics, in Pisa (1971), worked as a researcher and permanent lecturer at the Universities of Pisa, Amsterdam, Milan, and Montpellier, as a visiting professor at the Free University of Brussels (Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) and at the Ecole Supérieure de Science Informatique in Nice-Sophia Antipolis, currently at the Polytechnic University of Nice. He was one of the founders of Artificial Intelligence in Europe, being the first secretary of ECCAI (1982), President of ECAI84, and one of the founders of the Italian association AI*IA.

His most important scientific contributions concern the intersection between Computer Science and human learning, which includes Computation, Cognition, and Communication. He began with research on the human visual system (electrophysiology and psychophysics: University of Pisa, CNR Neurophysiology Laboratory and Department of Computer Science; and University of Amsterdam, Medical Physics Laboratory); later dedicating himself to Artificial Intelligence and human learning (Amsterdam, Milan, Montpellier).

He has authored approximately 160 articles in international journals, conference proceedings with reviewers, book chapters; he has written 9 books; he has been an invited speaker at conferences, universities, and industries (45); he has participated in more than 25 European projects; in 2 of them he was the scientific coordinator.

Between 2005 and 2010, he was Vice-Director (with Michel Robert and François Pierrot) of the Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics of Montpellier: LIRMM (www.lirmm.fr), with 400 researchers; a French multi-institutional unit of the University of Montpellier, CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation) that brings together all research activities in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. At the end of the term, the Laboratory obtained the highest evaluation rating (A+).

Stefano Cerri has developed a unified model for human and artificial agents that mutually provide various types of services. At this moment, his main commitment adopts the vision of the Web Science movement regarding models, infrastructures, and applications supporting connected communities of human agents who work, play, learn, and collectively contribute to politics.