Andrea Vandin

I investigate several research lines of Computer Science, pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, at the boundaries of the social sciences and biology. My research often regards the creation and development of languages, techniques, algorithms and tools grounded on rigorous math/statistics for the modelling and analysis of complex dynamical systems in various domains. I am interested in the development of scalable quantitative methods for the quantitative analysis of such systems, including simulation and model reduction.

I am interested in applying my research in practice, and hence I provided tool support for most of my contributions. An example is http://www.erode.eu, a fully-featured tool for the evaluation and reduction of dynamical systems. Furthermore, I also investigate statistical analysis techniques, and I developed the Statistical Model Checker http://bit.ly/MultiVeStATool. It allows one to easily enrich existing discrete-event simulators and agent-based models with automated distributed simulation-based analysis capabilities ensuring the statistical reliability of the obtained results.

Teaching mission

Being the first computer scientist ever hired in the Social Sciences area of Sant'Anna School, my teaching mission is to properly introduce our (non-computer science) students to the fundamental principles of computer science, good programming, and data analysis. Indeed, programming and data processing is now very present in the everyday life of students and researchers from several disciplines.

For example, I designed and teach the successful courses 'Introduction to Programming & Data Analytics & AI' (1 and 2) which attract students from all areas of the school, but also PhD students and researchers regularly join. The course makes extensive use of e-learning platforms and is one of the most popular courses in the school.

Teaching & Supervision

• Member of the Collegio dei Docenti (Academic Board) of the Italian National PhD in Artificial Intelligence, http://www.phd-ai.it/, from 2021-NOW
• Member of the Collegio dei Docenti (Academic Board) of the Master Degree in Economics from the University of Pisa and Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies Pisa, Italy 2023-NOW.
• Member of the selection committee for the ‘Allievi Ordinari’ (elite undergraduates students) of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies Pisa, Italy, 2020-NOW (~200 students)
• Responsible for the Master/Bachelor course Introduction to Programming, Data Analytics, and AI Module 1, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy, 2020-NOW (~40 students)
  • We introduce non-computer science students to structured programming with focuse on data analysis. This is one of the most popular courses in the School, regularly attended also by PhD students and researchers
• Responsible for the MSc/BSc course Introduction to Programming, Data Analytics and AI Module 2, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy, 2021-NOW (~40 students)
  • We introduce non-computer science students to artificial intelligence
• Responsible for the MSc course ICT: Business intelligence & CRM, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy, University of Trento, Italy, 2023-NOW (~25 students)
• Responsible for the Computer Science PhD course Introduction to Programming and Data Processing in Python, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy, 2021-NOW (~10 students)
• Responsible for the PhD course Introduction to Programming and Machine Learning, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy, 2021-2022 (~40 students)
• I regularly serve as external examiner for Danish universities like Aalborg University and ITU IT University of Copenhagen
• 2017-2019 - at DTU Technical University of Denmark
  • Responsible of the MSc course 02393 Programming in C++
  • Responsible of the MSc course 02247 Compiler Construction
  • Co-responsible of the MSc course 02246 Model Checking
  • Supervisor of the BSc project: "AlarmInsight", 02/09/2019-27/01/2020
  • Supervisor of the BSc project: "Statistical Model Checking for C++ Simulators: generalizing the MultiVeStA framework to C++ using JNI", 11/02/2019-17/06/2019
  • Supervisor of the BSc project: "MultiVeStA meets C++ simulators", 06/02/2019-12/06/2019
  • Co-supervisor of the MSc project: "Modeling and analysis in BADGraph: Analysis of system threats and Tool validation", 15/02/2019-12/07/2019
  • Supervisor of the BSc project: "BomberSumo: An online multiplayer game", 18/02/2019-13/05/2019
  • Co-supervisor of the BSc project: "A graphical extension/plugin to BADGraph: Visualizing and drawing security scenarios integrated with The Eclipse Foundation project Sirius", 06/02/2019-12/06/2019
  • Responsible/Supervisor of the special course: "Threat modelling and analysis in BADGraph", 02/01/2019-23/01/2019
  • Supervisor of the BSc project: "E-Comics: Electronic Comic Book Store and Streaming Service For Eudor Publishing Company", 03/10/2018-16/01/2019
  • Co-supervisor of the MSc project: "Vulnerability analysis using intruder and attack tree models", 02/01/2018-01/06/2018
  • Co-supervisor of the MSc project: "Model Reduction in Process Mining for Control Flow Discovery Purposes", 22/01/2018-22/07/2018
  • Co-supervisor of the BSc project: "CGull, automatic campaign records from Facebook, Adform and Google", 05/02/2018-04/06/2018
• 2017 and before
  • Co-responsible of the PhD course "Advanced Topics of Computer Science", IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy, 2017
  • Lecturer at the 16th International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication and Software Systems (SFM'16) [lecture notes], 2016
  • Co-responsible of the PhD course "Qualitative and Quantitative Formal Methods for Computer Science", IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, 2015
  • Lecturer of the MSc course "Formal Modeling of Software Intensive Systems", University of Camerino, Italy, 2015
  • Lecturer and mentor at the 1st Awareness Summer School (AWASS2012), 2012
  • Teaching assistant at University of Leicester, MSc course "Distributed Systems and Applications", 2012
  • Co-supervision of a number of PhD Students at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy.
  • Co-supervision of a number of MSc and BSc Students at University of Pisa, Italy.

Supervision:

• I am co-supervising 3 PhD students from the Italian National PhD on AI for Society. I supervised 1 PhD student in Computer Science at DTU funded by my grant REDUCTO from 2020 to 2023. I am also co-supervising a PhD student in Computer Science from Aalborg University, Denmark, one from IMT Lucca, Italy, and one from GSSI L’Aquila, Italy. I formally co-supervised 3 PhD student from IMT Lucca, Italy. Two of such students visited me at DTU for 4 and 2 months, resp. At Sant’Anna I supervised 4 Bachelor projects a 1 Master one. I de facto co-supervised 2 MSc projects at the Department of Economics of the University of Pisa. At DTU, I supervise(d) 4 MSc projects, 8 BSc ons for a total of 15 students, as well as several special courses. I co-supervised an MSc while being at the University of Southampton, UK.

Talks

• Speaker at more than 50 international conferences and workshops with peer-reviewed proceedings

Invited Talks

• Automated and Distributed Statistical Analysis of Economic Agent-Based Models, GSSI L’Aquila, 2023 
• Process mining for the Social Sciences, 1st International Workshop on Collaborative Mining for Distributed Systems, CoMinDs, Lucca, 2022
• Automated Statistical Analysis of Economic Agent-Based Models by Statistical Model Checking, 10th International Symposium, DATAMOD 2021 - FROM DATA TO MODELS AND BACK, online, 2021
• Automated Statistical Analysis of Economic Agent-Based Models by Statistical Model Checking, Economics Seminars Series, IMT School of Advanced Studies, Lucca, March 2021;
• Automated and Distributed Statistical Analysis of Economic Agent-Based Models, Economics Seminars, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, November 2020;
• Invitation to participate in the Dagstuhl Seminar on Computer Science Methods for Effective and Sustainable Simulation Studies, November 2020 [Canceled due to COVID’19]
• Speeding up the simulation of large-scale dynamical systems by aggregation, DEIS Unit of Aalborg University, DK, November 2019;
• Reduction of Ordinary Differential Equations with ERODE, IDA Danish Union of Engineers, May 2019;
• Course design: The case of a classic computer science course, 6th Biennial for Teaching and Learning, DTU, Denmark, April 2019 (Biennial19);
• Speeding up simulation of large-scale dynamical networks by aggregation, Sant'Anna School for Advanced Studies, Italy, March 2019
• Speeding up Stochastic and Deterministic Simulation by Aggregation: an Advanced Tutorial, 51st Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 2018), December 2018;
• Language-based abstractions for Ordinary Differential Equations, Tomography's Seminar Cycle, DTU Compute, Denmark, April 2018
• Language-based abstractions for massively concurrent systems, DTU Compute Denmark, June 2017
• Efficient Computation of Differential Equivalences, 15th International Workshop on Quantitative Aspects of Programming Languages (QAPL'17), Uppsala University, Sweden, April 2017
• Language-based abstractions for dynamical systems, DTU Compute Denmark, February 2017
• ERODE: Evaluation and Reduction of Ordinary Differential Equations, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, August 2016
• Quantitative Abstractions for Collective Adaptive Systems, 16th International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication and Software Systems (SFM2016), Bertinoro, Italy, June 2016
• Forward and Backward Bisimulations for Chemical Reaction Networks, University of Camerino, Italy, December 2015
• Ordinary Lumpability for Stochastic Process Algebras with Discrete and Continuous Semantics, University of Edinburgh, UK, May 2014
• Specification and Analysis of Systems with Dynamic Structure, ETH Zurich, CH, September 2012
• Self-assembly Strategies, Mentoring at Awareness Summer School AWASS2012, Edinburgh Napier University, UK, June 2012
• Towards the Analysis of Systems with Dynamic Structure, PhD Seminars Series (PhDSeminars), University of Leicester, UK, December 2011