Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Ph.D. in Computational Statistics, University of Naples Federico II, 2003
  Dissertation focused on the development of a general methodological and applied framework for classification and regression trees (CART).
• MSc in Economics and Statistics, University of Naples Federico II, 2000
  Graduated with honors.

Academic Positions

• Full Professor, Statistics for Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II (2020 – present)
• Associate Professor, Statistics for Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II (2014 – 2020)
• Assistant Professor, Statistics for Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II (2007 – 2014)
• Research Fellow, Statistics, University of Salerno (2005-2006)
• Research Fellow, Statistics, Competence Center for Transport, University of Naples Federico II (2004-2005)

Institutional Roles

Ongoing Roles

• Member of the Executive Board, Department of Economics and Statistics
• member of the Research Committee, Department of Economics and Statistics
• Responsible for the Research Quality Assessment (VQR), Department of Economics and Statistics
• Member of the Academic Board of the PhD Programme in Economics at the University of Naples Federico II
• Scientific coordinator for the Department in the following University-wide Task Forces:
  • Industry 4.0 and Sustainable Development
  • SUM (Smart and Sustainable Mobility)
  • Human & Future
• Coordinator of the event series “University and Employment: Data Analysis and Digital Economy”, aimed at enhancing the job placement of graduates in Economics and Business, specifically within the “Data Scientist for Economics and Enterprises” track at the University of Naples Federico II.
• Scientific coordinator of the IT laboratories of the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University of Naples Federico II.

Past Roles

• Member of the core design team for the new Master’s Degree Programme in Data Science at the University of Naples Federico II.
• Member of the selection committee for the “Simona Balbi Award”, which funds participation in summer schools for students who have demonstrated a strong interest in the study of statistics.
• Served as a member of the Admission Committee for several cycles of the PhD Programme in Statistics, Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
• Served as Researchers’ Representative on the Faculty Council (2007–2011).

Research Interests

My research activities span a wide range of areas in computational and applied statistics, with a strong focus on methodological development and empirical applications. In particular:

• Statistics for Social Research: Design and execution of socio-economic surveys and customer satisfaction studies
• Bibliometrics and Scientometrics: Statistical techniques for analyzing publication patterns, impact assessment, and science mapping
• Text Mining and NLP: Corpus analysis of scientific literature and textual datasets
• Missing Data Imputation: Recursive, incremental algorithms for imputing missing values in qualitative and quantitative data
• Computational Statistics: Development of estimation algorithms and numerical procedures, including supervised classification and neural networks
• Machine Learning: Decision trees, neural networks, latent class models, clustering, and factorial methods
• Regression Modelling: Nonparametric and semiparametric modeling techniques
• Informational Statistics: Data mining, market basket analysis, and knowledge discovery

Research Projects

• PRIN 2022 – SciK-Health: The value of scientific production for patient care in Academic Health Science Centres, Role: Principal Investigator (2023-2025)
• PRIN 2022 PNRR – The value of scientific production for patient care in Academic Health Science Centres, Role: Local Scientific Coordinator (2023-2025)
• Coordinator or team member in:
  • 5 EU-funded projects
  • 3 PNRR projects
  • 5 PRIN projects
  • 1 FIRB project
  • 11 national and regional research initiatives

Scientific Software

• Bibliometrix
  R package for comprehensive science mapping and bibliometric analysis
• Biblioshiny
  Shiny web app interface for Bibliometrix, enabling graphical science mapping workflows
• TAll – Text Analysis for All
  General-purpose R Shiny app for text data analysis and topic exploration
• E2Tree
  The Explainable Ensemble Trees approach – interpretable and explainable tree-based models for complex data
• DimensionsR
  Interface to the Dimensions API for bibliometric data extraction and analysis
  
• PubmedR
  R interface to the PubMed API for literature retrieval and analysis
  
• OpenalexR
  R interface to the OpenAlex API for open bibliometric data access and processing

Teaching Experience

• Courses taught (BSc, MSc, Ph.D.):
  • Statistics for Social Sciences
  • Sampling and Survey Methodologies
  • Bibliometric Methods and Text Mining in R
  • Machine Learning Laboratory in R
  • Advanced Statistical Methods for Social Research
• International lecturer at summer schools and doctoral programs
• Supervisor of MSc and Ph.D. theses in statistics, data science, and scientometrics

Editorial and Scientific Activities

• Associate Editor, Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group)
• Associate Editor for Statistics, Journal of Oral Pathology and Medicine (Wiley ed.)
• Reviewer for leading journals in statistics and information science
• Member of the Scientific Committee of the ERCIM Working Group on Computational and Methodological Statistics

Scientific Societies

• Società Italiana di Statistica (SIS)
• Associazione Italiana Studi di Popolazione (AISP)
• Associazione di Statistica Applicata (ASA)
• International Statistical Institute (ISI)
• International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC)

Languages

• Italian: Native
• English: Fluent (academic and professional proficiency)

Technical Skills

• Programming and Software: R, Python (basic), MatLab, LaTeX, Git, Quarto
• Frameworks: RStudio, Shiny, Positron, VIS, Plotly
• Reproducible Research: Quarto, RMarkdown, version-controlled workflows