GUERRA Francesco

I am Full Professor at the “Enzo Ferrari” Department of Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where I teach Software Engineering and Big Data Analysis. My research focuses on scalable techniques for data management and integration, with a particular interest in explainable and fair Machine Learning and Deep Learning approaches to the Entity Resolution problem. In recent years, I have been working on advanced methods for data mining and big data analytics, developing solutions for automatic anomaly and novelty detection aimed at increasing the robustness of machine learning systems in production environments.

I am also active in the areas of text analytics and Natural Language Processing, where I explore tools for the automatic analysis of textual and tabular data. I have contributed to semantic web projects, particularly in ontology creation and alignment, and I continue to study models for keyword-based semantic search over structured datasets.

Throughout my career, I have participated in several national and European research projects. I coordinated the COST Action KEYSTONE (IC1302 – Semantic Keyword Search on Structured Data Sources) from 2013 to 2017, and the European project Re-search Alps (INEA/CEF/ICT/A2016/1296967) from 2017 to 2019, which focused on mapping and promoting research institutions across the Alpine region. In 2019, I was Visiting Professor at the University of Rijeka, and from 2022 to 2024 I served as an external reviewer for Artificial Intelligence theses at the University of Malta.

Since 2024, I have been serving as the Rector’s Delegate for ICT at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Since 2022, I have chaired the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree councils in Computer Engineering. Previously, from 2021 to 2023, I coordinated the Computer Engineering and Science curriculum within the university’s PhD program in ICT. In all these roles, I strive to combine scientific research with a strong commitment to education and innovation in teaching, contributing to the design of academic pathways that address ongoing technological and societal transformations.