The research in Information Access and Search Engines is concerned with the design, the integration and the evaluation of advanced, scalable systems based on theoretical statistical and probabilistic methods. The combination of theoretical statistical and probabilistic methods, either classical or not classical (e.g. quantum), aims at evolving search engines to more advanced and complex search machines. The group is currently active in:

• Bagging algorithms for multivariate selection of features with local similarity

•  Mining of probabilistic dependencies between features

People: Silvana Badaloni (contact person)

• Biometric systems, to study novel approaches for biometric encryption, to develop new biometric systems (several biometric characteristics are studied: fingerprint/face/palm/knuckleprint/on-line signature/iris/hand identification).

•  Bioinformatics, to develop new methods for protein, peptide and gene classification, data mining for medical diagnosis. These tools are very useful for speeding the process of developing new drugs.

Nowadays, large amounts of data are produced in a wide spectrum of domains. The effective exploitation of this data, reckoned as one of the most important scientific challenges of the 21st century, requires a sharp paradigm shift with respect to traditional computing. Our research concerns the design, analysis, and engineering of algorithmic techniques for dealing with big data, exploring tradeoffs between computation efficiency and solution quality.Specific areas of investigation are listed below.

Support to medical diagnosis with classification and data mining techniquesPeople: Loris Nanni (contact person), Carlo Fantozzi, Andrea Pietracaprina, Geppino Pucci

In our aging society the costs for healthcare is skyrocketing. In this scenario, however, ICT may provide the mean both to introduce a new, holistic dimension unifying the concept of reactive healthcare with the one of proactive well-being, and to guarantee an economy of scale. In fact, maintaining healthy life styles from young age may reduce the costsinvolved in care for the elderlies.Our research activities focus on the problems related to memory disfunctions that are typical of the elderlies.

Measurements in dermatology are still largely performed manually. This can introduce errors and subjective bias, and is often prohibitively time consuming. Modern computer vision techniques can be used to perform the same measurements objectively and (more) reproducibly, while dramatically cutting time and costs.