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Cinzia Pizzi is associate professor at the department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova. Her research focuses on: Design of efficient algorithms and data structures for sequence analysis; Alignment-free techniques; Design of effective sequence encodings for machine/deep learning based approaches for clustering and classification; Explainable AI.
She is interested in both methodological and theoretical aspects related to the efficiency of the proposed algorithms and data structures, and software development for the application to real data analysis.
During her carrier she has been working on different computational problems in bioinformatics, starting with motif discovery during my PhD, and then moving to phylogeny and metagenomics. Recently she has been working on phenotype prediction and variant calling within a collaboration with the Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science department (BCA) on a PNNR Project first, and now on the European project EUAqua.
Moreover, results on general aspects of pattern matching can be applied also in contexts other than bioinformatics. This led in the past to collaboration with collegues working on different fields, for example text processing and temporal data analysis for smart cities.
Project "COmuNità VEneta per il Calcolo Scientifico - CONVECS", coordinated by UNIPD together with INFN (LNL+Padova), UNIVR, UNIVE Ca' Foscari and IUAV. Participant. Active from: 1/3/25
European Project EUAqua, in collaboration with the department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science (BCA). Participant (PI Prof. L. Bargelloni), in charge to design effective computational approaches to assess variant impacts in phenotype determination. Active from 1/1/25
- Activity 3, spoke 2, NBFC - National Biodiversity Future Center, PNRR.
From 1/9/2022 to 31/12/2026; participant, in charge of design computationally efficient and effective bioinformatics pipelines for phenotype prediction
- Department Project (SID): ''Algorithms for Networks Analysis and Bioinformatics Applications''; participant (PI F.Vandin), from 2017 to 2019;
- Project of National Interest (PRIN): ''Compositional approaches for the characterization and mining of omics data'', Role: Principal Investigator; from 2014 to 2017; 391929 euro Project web site
- University of Padova Project: ''Pattern discovery and computational problems for whole genomes comparison'', participant, 2012-2013
- University of Padova Project: ''Computational Assessment of Protein–Protein Interaction Networks and Validation as a Guide for Modern System Biology'', Role:participant, 2008–2010
- CARIPARO projects of excellence: ''Systems Biology approaches to infer gene and protein time-series expression data'', participant; from 01-07-2008 to 31-12-2011
- European project HuBi - Hungarian Bioinformatics MTKD-CT-2006-042794 with a Marie Curie Host Fellowships for Transfer of Knowledge, 2010
- FIRB Projects (Fundings on fundational research) ''Pattern Discovery in Discrete Structures, with Applications to Bioinformatics'', participant; from 01-07-2006 to 30-06-2010
- EU Project ''Regulatory Genomics'' 2004-2008, University of Helsinki, Finland, participant;
from 15-09-2005 to 30-11-2006
- Project of National Interest (PRIN): ''Metodologie di data mining per le applicazioni di e-business'', Role; participant; from 2005 to 2006
- EU Marie Curie Early Stage Fellowship at European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), 2005
Cinzia Pizzi got her Ph.D. from the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy in 2005 under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Apostolico. She then joined as a postdoctoral researcher the From Data to Knowledge Center of Excellence under the supervision of Prof. Esko Ukkonen in Helsinki (Finland). Then she moved for a year to the Bobab Team of Marie-France Sagot in Lyon, before returning to University of Padova (Italy) where she became Assistant Professor first, and then an Associate Professor. During her early carrier (and before maternity) she had the chance to be a visiting researcher at several prestigious Universities and Research Centers (University of Purdue, GeorgiaTech, Hungarian Academy of Science). She also had the opportunity to work at the European Bioinformatics Institute thanks to an early stage Marie-Curie fellowship in the Computational Genomics group.
Awards:
- "Avere Trent'anni" research award for excellent young researchers from the University of Padova, assigned by a commission with both academic and industrial representatives among young researchers of the whole University of Padova, 2008
- Outstanding Young Researcher, Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, 2010
Current appointments:
- Member of the excecutive committee of the Master on "Analysis of Omics Data" at the University of Padova.
- Founding member of the inter-departments Research Center HIT (Human Inspired Technology) of the University of Padova. She was also a member of the Ethic Committee of the Center in 2014-2017.
- Member of the PhD board at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova
- Member of the Teaching Commission of the Bachelor and Master Degree in Computer Engineering" at the University of Padova.
- Reference person for international mobility of the Bachelor Degree in Computer Enginering.
- Member of the department committee "Teaching and AI".
Editorial board member International journal JOVE
Main topic editor for the Research Topic "From one genome to many genomes: the evolution of computational approaches for pangenomics and metagenomics analysis" in Frontiers in Bioinfomatics
Co-editor of Recomb-Seq 2021 special issue in the international journal iScience
Reviewer for International Journals:
Reviewer for many international journals in Computer Science and Bioinformatics, amongh which:
Nature - Scientific Reports, Plos Computational Biology, BMC Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics, BMC Algorithms for Molecular Biology, iScience, IEEE Transaction on Computational Biology, Frontiers in Bioinformatics, International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, Frontiers in Signal Processing, Theoretical Computer Science, Knowledge and Information Systems, The Computer Journal, Algorithms, International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, Journal of Discrete Algorithms, Parallel Processing Letters.
Conferences Organization
- RECOMB 2021: Organizing committee
- RECOMB 2021: Satellites Local Chair
- RECOMB 2020: Organizing committee
- RECOMB 2020: Satellites Local Chair
- BITS 2020: Conference of the Bioinformatics Italian Society. Expected role: co-Chair. The conference did not take place due to the pandemic
- Workshop on algorithms and tools for the analysis of big omics data, co-located with BITS 2019.
General co-Chair together with Simona E. Rombo and Fabio
Fassetti
- Genome Compression Day, Main Organizer, Padova, 10th September 2018
- AxA Workshop: Advanced Algorithms on strings: Organizing Committee co-Chair
- RECOMB 2006: Organizing Committee Member
- Dialogues 2004: joint event including: Symposium on String Processing and Information Retrieval (SPIRE), Discovery Science (DS), and Algorithmic Learning Theory (ALT): Organizing committee member.
- ESSIR2000: European Summer School in Information Retrieval. Student volunteer.
Program Committees
Current
- WABI 2026: Programm Committee
- BITS 2026: Program Committee
- CIBB 2026: Program Committee
- EPIA 2026: Program Committee
Past
RECOMB-Seq (co-chair) 2021
Participation to the PC of several edition of conferences in bioinformatics and string processing, among which:
RECOMB, WABI, CPM, SPIRE, CIBB, ICTCS, EPIA, ITBAM, Global Health, CiE, BIGPMED...
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