National PhD in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our daily lives, permeating a growing number of devices and services. It is also crucial for scientific research, thanks to advanced techniques for analyzing large amounts of data. AI is driving innovation in industrial and urban policies, digitizing public administration, and revolutionizing healthcare and transportation systems. However, these opportunities also present significant challenges, both methodological and technical, as well as ethical and legal.

To address these challenges, the National PhD in Artificial Intelligence was established, with the aim of training researchers capable of developing AI systems that correspond to European ethical values, human-centric, adaptable to real environments, and able to interact in complex social contexts, promoting reliable, fair, and sustainable AI.

The National PhD Program in AI comprises 5 federated doctorates bringing together 61 organizations, including universities and other research institutions. The 5 doctorates share a common basis in the foundations and methodological aspects of AI, each developing an area of specialization in a strategic application sector of these methodologies. Each doctorate is coordinated by a lead university, in collaboration with CNR, the National Research Council. The five doctorates and the corresponding leading universities are:

• Society, University of Pisa;
• Health and Life Sciences, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome;
• Agriculture (agrifood) and Environment, University of Naples Federico II;
• Security and Cybersecurity, Sapienza University of Rome;
• Industry 4.0, Polytechnic University of Turin.

The existing interrelation between the “horizontal component,” common to all five doctoral programs, and the “vertical component,” different for each of them, allows the National PhD to provide an integrated and multifocal vision of Artificial Intelligence, a necessary tool to progress in research and, at the same time, to address the challenges outlined in the premise.

Following a national selection procedure in 2021, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies became one of the 8 partner institutions of the PhD AI for Society (Society) coordinated by the University of Pisa. This program, whose faculty council includes numerous members of the L’EMbeDS Department of Excellence, is an integral part of a dynamic community operating in the domains of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In particular, the doctorate in question focuses on topics such as Human-centric AI, Explainable AI, AI for personal assistance, AI for social interaction, AI for social good, employing AI technologies and models as an innovative tool for the study of society and the complexity of social and economic phenomena.

Furthermore, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, as an associated entity, in the past cycles also funded a doctoral scholarship in the Health and Life Sciences area, whose theme concerns “Adaptive controls for hand prostheses.”

Academic Year 2024-2025 (40th Doctoral Cycle)

Sant’Anna School offers four scholarships to support research projects in the following areas:

• 1 scholarship in AI, Statistics, Computer Science and Engineering for methodological research driven by big data with applications in Economics, Management and Law, funded by the Department of Excellence L’EMbeDS (references: Francesca Chiaromonte and Andrea Vandin) - Call B (deadline June 20, 2024);
• 2 scholarships in Scientific Machine Learning for Urban Microclimate Surrogate Modelling, funded by the ERC StG DANTE project (reference: Giovanni Stabile) - Call B (deadline June 20, 2024);
• 1 scholarship in AI, Statistical Learning and Machine Learning methodologies for complex real-time data, co-funded by PNRR funds and a major industrial partner, FAMECCANICA.Data S.p.A, part of the Angelini group (references: Francesca Chiaromonte and Andrea Vandin for L’EMbeDS, Enrico Iavazzo for FAMECCANICA) - Call C (deadline August 22, 2024).