People

Rocco De Nicola

Full Professor, IMT Rector
rocco.denicola@imtlucca.it

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About me

De Nicola graduated in “Scienze dell’Informazione” at Università di Pisa in 1978 and received a Ph.D. in “Computer Science” at the University of Edinburgh (UK) in 1985. De Nicola is full professor of “Computer Science” at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. From 1995 until 2011, he was full professor at Dipartimento di Sistemi e Informatica, Università di Firenze, and, from 1990 until 1995, at Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Informazione, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”. Previously, he was a full-time researcher at IEI-CNR in Pisa and worked at Edinburgh University, Italtel in Milano and Olivetti in Pisa. He also has been visiting professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and visiting scholar at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Rector of the IMT School since November 1st, 2021, De Nicola has also served as a member of the School’s Academic Senate and Board of Governors.

A fellow of EATCS, De Nicola is listed among Thomson ISI’s World Cited Researchers (ISI HiglyCited) and is also a member of Academia Europaea, Gruppo 2003 and Working Group 2.2 and 1.9 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). In 2005 he was appointed as ‘Commendatore della Repubblica’ (Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic) by the President of the Republic of Italy Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

De Nicola is the deputy director of CINI National Laboratory for Cybersecurity and the director of Cybersecurity Competence Center of Tuscany (C3T). He is also Coordinator of the National Ph.D. Program in Cybersecurity (Ph.D. CySec) and a member of the Board of Directors of the SERICS (SEcurity and RIghts In the CyberSpace) Foundation.

During his academic career, De Nicola has been member of several advisory boards of international research institutions and has served as Principal Investigator for numerous research projects funded by the EU, MUR, CNR, Tuscany Region and private companies.

Research Activities

De Nicola’s research concerns the foundations of distributed computing, formal specification and verification of qualitative and quantitative properties of systems, and protection of distributed systems and computer networks. Current research focuses on:

De Nicola is the author of more than 250 publications in international journals or books with international editors, has been “invited speaker” at international conferences and schools, and “program chair” and member of program committees of many international conferences. On these topics, De Nicola collaborates with researchers from many national and international institutions and is the author of more than 250 publications in international refereed journals and conference proceedings. De Nicola has also edited books and special issues of journals and the white book: The Future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Projects and Actions to better defend Italy from cyber attacks (available also in Italian).

Currently, De Nicola is the editor-in-chief of the ‘Journal on Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming’ published by Elsevier, associate editor for ‘Journal Mathematical Structures in Computer Science’ (Cambridge University Press), editor of ‘Journal Electronics Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science’ and editor of the ‘Journal Computer Science’ (Springer Nature Computer Science). He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the International Federated Conferences on Distributed Computing Techniques (DISCOTEC), the International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION), the International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM).

Selected Publications