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Ongoing Granted Research Projects

I have been working on the following granted research projects, applying AI, NLP, and Big Data to real-world scenarios — particularly in Labour Market Intelligence, Explainable AI, and Skill Intelligence.

  • EUROSTAT + CEDEFOP [2025 – current]

    Development and maintenance of web content retrieval and data processing pipelines for statistical purposes within the Web Intelligence Hub — EC-ESTAT/2025/OP/0012. Funded by Eurostat and Cedefop, the project enhances and maintains the Web Intelligence Hub (WIH) system across all 27+1 EU countries, upgrading it with state-of-the-art AI, ML, and NLP techniques. (Head of Research Unit)

  • ISALDI [2023 – current]

    Interpretable Stock Analysis Leveraging Deep Multimodal Models — PRIN Italian Project (2023–2025), funded by the Italian Ministry for Research. Develops novel NLP algorithms to extract information from web content (e.g., social media) for sentiment analysis and explainable AI in the financial domain. (Co-Principal Investigator)

  • ETF – Human Capital Development [2022 – current]

    Human Capital Development Expertise Services — Lotto 4 - Big Data Analytics Framework Service Contract (2022–2026), funded by the European Training Foundation (ETF). Develops and enriches online job vacancy (OJV)-based data systems for a “Big Data for Labour Market Intelligence” initiative in developing countries and ETF partner countries, within EU external relations policies. (Head of Research Unit)

  • Lanbide – Basque Country Skills System [2024 – current]

    Adaptación del sistema de evaluación de competencias demandadas por el mercado de trabajo — LAN/A-37/2024, funded by Lanbide – Servicio Vasco de Empleo / Prospektiker S.A. Transforms the 2022 web-based prototype into a fully-fledged system that analyses skill demand (ESCO) by occupation, based on job offers from major employment portals in the Basque Country. (Principal Investigator)

Past Granted Research Projects

  • PNRR Age-It [2022 – 2026]

    Age-It — Ageing Well in an Ageing Society, funded by the Italian Ministry for Research (PNRR), a national programme involving 27 partners (15 universities, 5 national institutes, 7 companies). Within Spoke 1, WP 6, Task 6, the project defined a methodology for integrating big data into official statistics (smart statistics) and developed a working prototype to monitor ageing-related phenomena through AI and Big Data Analytics. (Task Leader)

  • Astrolabour [2022 – 2025]

    Astrolabour — The Bicocca Italian Labour Market Observatory, funded by the University of Milano-Bicocca (Grandi Infrastrutture grant). Developed an Italian labour market observatory using Big Data Analytics (on AWS) and AI to process millions of online job ads, extracting occupations, skills, trends, skill gaps, and skill mismatches. (Principal Investigator)

  • EUROSTAT + CEDEFOP – WIH-OJA [2020 – 2024]

    Towards the European Web Intelligence Hub — European System for Collection and Analysis of Online Job Advertisement Data (WIH-OJA) — AO/DSL/VKVET-JBRAN/WIH-OJA/002/20, funded by Cedefop. A continuation of the Real-Time LMI framework contract, consolidating the online vacancy analysis tool and developing it into a system integrated with Eurostat Smart Statistics, extended to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Iceland. (Head of Research Unit)

  • H2020 – PILLARS [2021 – 2023]

    Pathways to Inclusive Labour Markets — GA 101004703, funded by the European Commission under H2020-SC6. Provided policymakers and the public with insights into the evolving demand for new skills and how to adapt education and training systems, including analysis of past, present, and future labour market trends. Project website (Head of Research Unit)

  • CFMT – Osservatorio Manager Terziario [2021 – 2022]

    Analysis of Italian Online Job Vacancies for Tertiary Sector Managers with Pre/Post COVID-19 Trends, funded by CFMT – Centro di Formazione Management del Terziario. Studied job advertisements for service sector managers in Italy, comparing job demand before and after COVID-19 — including source selection, data classification, skill extraction, and data visualisation. (Head of Research Unit)

  • ENISA – Cybersecurity Labour Market [2021]

    Cybersecurity Labour Market Analysis through automatic job vacancy analysis, funded by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). Enriched the ENISA occupation and skill taxonomy using evidence from online job ads, identifying cybersecurity-related professional profiles and skills in IT, ES, IE, FR, and DE. (Principal Investigator)

  • Eurofound – Big Data Guidelines [2021 – 2022]

    Collecting and analysing big quantitative data: statistical analysis and machine learning, funded by Eurofound – European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Produced a guideline outlining steps, challenges, and methodologies for implementing Big Data Analytics projects, supported by academic literature and case studies. (Principal Investigator)

  • Lanbide – Skills Prototype [2022 – 2023]

    Sistema de evaluación de competencias demandadas por el mercado de trabajo — LAN/A-46/2022, funded by Lanbide – Servicio Vasco de Empleo / Prospektiker S.A. Designed and developed a web-based prototype that analyses ESCO skill demand by occupation from online job vacancies in the Basque Country, including a user self-assessment tool. (Principal Investigator)

  • AI and Legal Studies Perspectives [2019 – 2022]

    Artificial Intelligence and Legal Studies Perspectives — PRIN project (code 2017L9HJ25), funded by the Italian Ministry for Research (MUR), with partners CRISP-Unimib, LUISS, Università di Foggia, UniMore, and UniGenova. Investigated the impact of AI on consolidated legal categories in labour law, as well as its implications for tax and corporate law, by processing over 5 million Italian online job vacancies related to legal professions using NLP, NLU, and XAI methods. (Head of Research Unit)

  • AI4ESCO [2019 – 2020]

    Data Driven Bridge Towards ESCO Using AI Algorithms, funded by the European Commission (EURES — call EaSI-EURES VP/2019/010). Supported Member States and EURES partners in establishing high-quality mapping tables for matching job vacancies and CVs on the European Job Mobility Portal. The resulting ISTAT CP-2011 to ESCO bridge is now the official EU mapping released by the European Commission. (Head of Research Unit)

  • ESCALATE [2019 – 2021]

    Coordinated Higher Institutions Responses to Digitalization — 2019-1-RO01-KA203-063214, funded by the European Commission. Studied digitalization in universities and developed the Digital Escalator, a framework for mapping local digital skills training offers for specific sectors. (Senior Researcher)

  • E-MLSR [2020 – 2022]

    European Mid Life Skills Review — 2020-1-UK01-KA204-079009, funded by the European Commission. Developed innovative materials for mid-career skill development; online tools helped Skill Coaches guide users in assessing their skills and matching them to ESCO occupations. (Senior Researcher)

  • ACSOL [2021 – 2023]

    Acquiring Crisis-Proof Skills through Online Learning — 2020-1-ES01-KA226-VET-096242, funded by the European Commission. Expanded digital skills training for adults through online learning, targeting the social care and arts sectors affected by COVID-19, developing an eLearning toolkit for low-skilled workers. (Senior Researcher)

  • SLeM – Smart Legal Management [2018 – 2020]

    Smart Legal Management — F/050276/00/X32, funded by MIUR (PON project), led by Eustema S.p.A. Explored data analysis and predictive algorithms for budget forecasting and classification of legal cases and documentation in the legal domain. (Head of Research Unit)

  • Observatory of Digital Competences [2017 – 2021]

    Osservatorio delle Competenze Digitali, commissioned by the main Italian ICT industry associations (Assinform, Assintel, Assinter, AICA) with the patronage of AgID and MIUR. Developed and maintained a monitoring system for the demand for ICT-related professional skills in Italy, applying Big Data Analytics and AI (ML and word embeddings) to millions of online job ads to compute a skill digital rate measuring the pervasiveness of digital competences across occupations. (Head of Research Unit)

  • EDUSCOPIO [2017 – 2025]

    Eduscopio, funded by the Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli (research agreement), in collaboration with CRISP-Unimib. Integrated administrative archives (MIUR graduate registry and Ministry of Labour mandatory communications) to build a knowledge base for post-diploma analysis, enabling performance evaluation of Italian technical and vocational secondary schools at two years from graduation. eduscopio.it (Head of Research Unit)

  • Real-Time LMI – EU System [2016 – 2020]

    Real-time Labour Market Information on Skill Requirements: Setting up the EU System for Online Vacancy Analysis, funded by Cedefop EU Agency. Framework contract led by the University of Milano-Bicocca to set up an EU system for online vacancy analysis covering all 28 EU Member States and 24 languages. (Head of Research Unit)

  • University Orientation via Open Data [2016 – 2017]

    University Orientation Support through Open Data Integration, funded by Regione Lombardia (collaboration agreement under art. 15, L. 241/1990). Integrated heterogeneous structured and unstructured sources (Almalaurea, Regione Lombardia Open Data, mandatory labour communications, and online job ads) into a graph-database knowledge base to support university orientation for graduates and school-leavers. (Head of Research Unit)

  • Real-Time LMI – Prototype [2015 – 2016]

    Real-time Labour Market Information on Skill Requirements: Feasibility Study and Working Prototype — AO/RPA/VKVET-NSOFRO/Real-Time LMI/010/14, funded by Cedefop EU Agency. Explored the feasibility of using online LMI sources to identify skills needs in Europe in real-time, developing and evaluating a functioning prototype across five EU countries. (Senior Researcher)

  • Data Consistency Evaluation through AI Planning [2012 – 2014]

    Granted by ARIFL Agency on behalf of Regione Lombardia. Defined a formal algorithm for checking the data quality and consistency of weakly-structured administrative data — comprising tens of millions of records from mandatory labour communications (COB) — by expressing the problem as AI planning via model-checking, where the error trace provides a deterministic inconsistency witness. (Researcher)

  • Automatic Data Cleansing through AI Planning [2012 – 2014]

    Granted by ARIFL Agency on behalf of Regione Lombardia. Defined and implemented a novel technique (built on top of UPMurphi) for the automatic synthesis of a Universal Cleanser — a repository of all feasible actions capable of cleansing dirty administrative data — connected directly to external databases for processing up to millions of records. (Researcher)