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Biography

Roberto Di Pietro (Fellow, IEEE; Distinguished Scientist, ACM; Fellow, AAIA; Member Academia Europaea) is a Professor of Computer Science with the KAUST CEMSE Division, Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was a Professor in Cybersecurity and founder of the Cyber-Security Research Innovation Lab (CRI-Lab) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)-College of Science and Engineering (CES), Qatar.

Previously, at Bell Labs (Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia), he served as Global Head for Security Research, managing three security research departments based in Paris, Munich and Espoo, aligning research with business objectives and moving research results into innovation. Before, he was a tenured professor at the University of Padova. He started his career as a senior military officer within the Italian Ministry of Defence (MoD), working on security-related nationwide technology projects.

He has been working in the cybersecurity field for more than 25 years, leading technology-oriented and research-focused teams in the private sector, government and academia. He has served as a senior security consultant for international organizations, including the United Nations (U.N.) and U.N. agencies (the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Global Service Centre (UNLB) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)). In addition to his international experience, he was appointed Seconded National Expert and detached for one year at the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust).

As per his drive for innovation, besides being involved in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of startups—and having founded one (exited)—he is on the board of research centres and startups.

In 2011-2012, he was awarded a Chair of Excellence from the University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain. In 2020, he received the Jean-Claude Laprie Award for having significantly influenced the theory and practice of Dependable Computing. In 2022, he was awarded the Individual Innovation Award from HBKU. He has been consistently included in Stanford University's "World Ranking Top 2% Scientists" list since this ranking existed.

His education accounts for an M.S. in Computer Science ('94) and an M.S. in Informatics ('03), both from the University of Pisa (UniPi), Italy, and a Specialization Diploma in Operations Research and Strategic Decisions ('03) and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science ('04), both from the University of Rome "La Sapienza."

In his academic career, he has secured more than $9 million in funding (either as LPI or PI).

Research Interests

A cybersecurity expert, his main research interests include AI-driven cybersecurity, security and privacy for distributed systems (e.g., UAVs, Blockchain technology, Cloud, IoT, OSNs), applied cryptography, FinTech, Quantum Computing and data science. In particular, Di Pietro identifies three lines of research above all others: critical infrastructure protection (CIP), online social networks (OSN) and cloud security.

He has extensively contributed scientific articles to the cited topics, co-authored four books and registered many patents and applications.

Keyword tag icon
cybersecurity Critical Infrastructure Protection Distributed Systems Security On-line Social Networks

Education Profile

  • Post-doc at the National Research Council ('04-'06), Pisa-Italy

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science ('04), University of Roma "La Sapienza", Italy.

  • Specialization Diploma in Operations Research and Strategic Decisions ('03), University of Roma "La Sapienza", Italy.

  • MS in informatics ('03), University of Pisa, Italy.

  • MS in Computer Science ('94). University of Pisa, Italy.

Awards and Recognitions

  • ACM Distinguished Scientist, Association for Computing Machinery ACM, 2019

  • IEEE Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2023

  • Jean-Claude Laprie Award, The IFIP 10.4 working group on Dependable Computing, 2020

  • World Ranking Top 2% Scientists, Stanford University, 2020 - 2022

  • The Individual Inventor Award, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), 2022

  • Chair of Excellence, The University Carlos III of Madrid, 2011

  • Best Associate Editor Award, Pervasive and Mobile Computing journal, 2021

  • Best Associate Editor Award, Computer Communications journal, 2023

Publications

  • Gabriele Oligeri, Savio Sciancalepore, Simone Raponi, Roberto Di Pietro: PAST-AI: Physical-Layer Authentication of Satellite Transmitters via Deep Learning. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 18: 274-289 (2023)

  • Savio Sciancalepore, Pietro Tedeschi, Ahmed Aziz, Roberto Di Pietro: Auth-AIS: Secure, Flexible, and Backward-Compatible Authentication of Vessels AIS Broadcasts. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secur. Comput. 19(4): 2709-2726 (2022)

  • Roberto Di Pietro, Simone Raponi, Maurantonio Caprolu, Stefano Cresci: New Dimensions of Information Warfare. Advances in Information Security 84, Springer 2021, ISBN 978-3-030-60617-6, pp. 1-226

  • Pietro Tedeschi, Savio Sciancalepore, Roberto Di Pietro: ARID: Anonymous Remote IDentification of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. ACSAC 2021: 207-218

  • Andrea De Salve, Paolo Mori, Barbara Guidi, Laura Ricci, Roberto Di Pietro: Predicting Influential Users in Online Social Network Groups. ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data 15(3): 35:1-35:50 (2021)

Research Areas

  • Computer Science
  • Machine Learning

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