The Orthogonal School activities continue with exciting new seminars and presentations covering topics ranging from the untold history of deep learning to programming languages, as the students and mentors meet at the Certosa di Pontignano, a picturesque monastery immersed in the Tuscan countryside.
17-19 Arrival and room assignment
19:30 Dinner
21:15 Mentors’ meeting
21:15 Socio-cultural activities: choral singing (led by Roberto De Prisco), cinema (led by Filippo Garagnani) and theatre (led by Riccardo Chimisso and Simone Moretti)
09:15 Ozalp Babaoglu, Welcome message from the president
09:30-10:30 Matteo Ceccarello, Presentation of the projects:
10:30-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-12:00: Work in three groups:
12:30 Lunch
15:00-16:00 Simone Martini, Why are there so many programming languages?
16:00-17:30 Zeynep Kiziltan, Getting Started with Research Writing & Publication
17:30-18:00 Coffee Break
18:00-19:00 Alessandro Panconesi, The true story of Deep Learning
19:30 Dinner
21:15 Socio-cultural activities: choral singing (led by Roberto De Prisco), cinema (led by Filippo Garagnani) and theatre (led by Riccardo Chimisso and Simone Moretti)
09:30-10:45: Moreno Muffatto, Innovazione: tecnologie e mercati
10:45-11:15: Coffee Break
11:15-12:15: Work in three groups:
12:15-12:30: Conclusions and next events
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Departures
Zeynep Kiziltan earned her PhD in Computer Science from Uppsala University (Sweden) in 2004, receiving the award for the best thesis in Artificial Intelligence in Europe from EurAI. She then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Bologna, where she later became an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science (DISI). Her research focuses on predictive and prescriptive data analysis based on AI, aimed at solving combinatorial optimization problems in various application domains, including high-performance computing (HPC). She has collaborated on numerous scientific projects with companies and international universities, published several papers, and released software and datasets. Since 2021, she has been an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Constraint Programming.
At ELICSIR, she is a mentor for the Orthogonal School.
Simone Martini is a Professor of Computer Science at University of Bologna.
He received the Laurea degree in Scienze dell’Informazione and the Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica (Ph.D. in Computer Science) from Università di Pisa. Before joining the University of Bologna in 2002, he was Research Associate and Associate Professor at the Università di Pisa, and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Udine. He was Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (2015 to 2018) and member of the Board of Governors of the University of Bologna (2021 to 2024).
He has been a visiting scientist at the former Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation, Palo Alto (internship); at Stanford University; at École normale supérieure, Paris; at the Université Paris 13; at University of California at Santa Cruz, and at the Collegium – Lyon Institute for Advanced Studies (fellow, 2018-1019).
He was a member of the Council of the Commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing, of the International Union for History and Philosophy of Science, 2017-2023. Until 2018, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per l’Informatica (CINI) and of the Executive Board of EQANIE, the European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education. He was also a member of the Board of the European Association for Computer Science Logic (EACSL) and of the Executive Board of the Associazione Italiana di Logica e Applicazioni (AILA).
He has been researching the foundations of programming languages for several decades. Today his interests have shifted more toward the epistemology, history and teaching of computer science.
Moreno Muffatto is a Professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Finance at the University of Padua. He leads the SCENT – School of Entrepreneurship research group.
He is the Coordinator of the Entrepreneurship and Startup program for doctoral students and post-docs at the University of Padua. From 2012 to 2016, he led the Italian team of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a research project involving 115 countries that consists of an annual assessment of the level of entrepreneurial activity in each country.
His research interests are now in the field of AI applications in research and teaching.
He founded the Doctoral Dissertation Award on Artificial Intelligence in Entrepreneurship and
Management (AIEM), now in its third edition, and he is a Co-founder and President of the first Italian Chapter of the Project Management Institute (1996).
Since 2004, he has also been founding director of the Executive Master in Project Management and Innovation Management. He is also Founding President of the Imprendi Foundation – School of Entrepreneurship (2021).
Alessandro is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sapienza in Rome. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University. His research interests cover all aspects of algorithms, with a particular focus on randomized and distributed algorithms, and more recently, machine learning. He is the President of BICI, the Bertinoro International Center for Informatics. He has received international recognition for his research, including the ACM Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award, the Dijkstra Prize, and faculty awards from IBM, Yahoo!, and Google, as well as two Google Focused Awards. He has served on the program committees of major conferences such as SODA, PODC, ICALP, WWW, and KDD, also taking on leadership roles. He is an associate editor of JCSS.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of ELICSIR and the Board of the Orthogonal School.
Scientific research is not truly complete until its results are published. Yet, scientists’ education is often primarily technical, offering limited training in how to write about and disseminate research work. As participants of the Orthogonal School embark on the exciting journey of scientific research, this is an ideal moment to begin exploring the fundamentals of the research communication process. This introductory lecture will first provide background on research writing and publication in the field of computer science, then focus on how to structure a research paper and what key elements to include to communicate research effectively.
The inability to impose a standard in programming languages and, therefore, the availability of many of them, is a constant in the history of computer science.
I will argue that this is an inherent feature of programming languages as “mediators” and that it is a positive feature, not a flaw.
At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, there were attempts to define a “total” programming language that would render all others obsolete. Examples of these attempts include PL/I (IBM, 1965), Ada (US DoD, 1980), and the “extensible languages” of the early 1970s. I will retrace the main elements of this story and try to understand why a total language is an unattainable myth. Indeed, it is harmful. The multiplicity of programming languages is “the opposite of a curse”. It is “a gift and benediction beyond reckoning” (G. Steiner, Errata, 1997).
The analysis begins with Technology S-Curves, a fundamental tool for understanding how the performance of a technology improves over time following a non-linear pattern: an initial phase of slow growth, a phase of rapid advancement, and finally a stage of maturity and saturation.
In this context, the concept of Dominant Design is introduced, referring to the technological configuration that becomes the market standard.
The lesson then examines Technological Discontinuities, the points that mark the transition from an established technology to a completely new one. These discontinuities create instability in industrial sectors but open competitive opportunities for new firms.
Within technological discontinuities, it is possible to distinguish between incremental innovation and radical innovation: the former involves gradual improvements to existing technologies, while the latter entails paradigm shifts and the creation of new markets.
Technological discontinuities also reveal the presence of so-called Disruptive Technologies, emerging technologies that initially exhibit lower performance compared to established solutions but, thanks to rapid improvements, eventually transform entire industrial sectors.
Finally, the behavior of markets is analyzed through innovation-adoption models, highlighting the differences among various types of users based on their propensity to adopt a new technology.
In this (hopefully) agile outreach seminar, we will explore some surprising aspects of the deep learning revolution, with the aim of providing a useful framework for contextualizing this important phenomenon.
Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, Castelnuovo Berardenga
The ELICSIR Foundation was founded in October 2023 as an Italian non-profit “Ente del Terzo Settore (ETS)” and is registered with the Registro Unico Nazionale del Terzo Settore (RUNTS) as 04154681201.
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