Vincenzo Pallotta

• Geneva, Switzerland
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My passion at your service!

Vincenzo Pallotta's Bio:

Vincenzo Pallotta's Experience:

• Chairman at ISOC Switzerland Chapter

  April 2012 - March 2013

  I am a founding member of the ISOC Switzerland Chapter. The Switzerland ISOC Chapter has been officially constituted on April 22, 2012 in Geneva after nearly two years of preparation work made by the Transition Team.

• Associate Dean at UBIS -UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

  2012 - 2013

  In charge of: - IT infrastructure and services management - Operational Process Management and Optimization - Academic Quality Assurance - Corporate services and event organization

• Fellow at InnoPark

  June 2012 - August 2012

  - Develop and promote the LeanStart.ch concept - Find partners for my startup ideas - Join innovative projects in the area of ICT, Services and Education.

• Founder and CTO at InterAnalytics

  February 2010 - February 2012

  I co-founded interAnalytics as a way to leverage the research I carried out during the last 10 years in Computational Linguistics. My role in this startup was to transfer the technology from my research and setup a framework for the development of business applications. The major achievements in this project are: 1. Development of a framework for understanding human conversations from a pragmatic perspective through argumentative analysis. 2. Substantial contribution to the design and implementation of the Automatic Argumentative Analysis (A3) system, which will be used as the core engine for interAnalytics business application, including, but not limited to, Customer Interaction Analytics. 3. Product development for the business application in Customer Interaction Analytics for Quality Assurance in Contact Centers and Social Media Monitoring. This work established a strong correlation (and thus a predictive power) of argumentative analysis and Customer Oriented Behaviors. The latter correlate to Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) entailing a predictive power of argumentative analysis for measuring CSAT directly from the analysis of recorded conversations.

• Formateur at University of Geneva

  2011 - 2012

  Executive Training in Project Management and IT Service Management (programme MATIS).

• Research Coordinator and Adjunct Professor at Webster University

  April 2008 - December 2010

  At Webster University Geneva, I had a double mandate: 1. I have been teaching several classes in the Computer Science and Information Management program such as: - System Analysis and Design - Information Systems I and II - Databases I and II - Computer Applications For the capstone course Information Systems II, I promoted the development of a discovery prototype for the Student Planner project. The results of the project were highly appreciated by the academic director who decided to support its further development. I was also responsible of the IBM Academic Initiative, which allowed faculty and students to freely access to IBM software and educational material. 2. I was a research coordinator in the field of computational linguistics. In collaboration with the Laboratory of Computational Linguistics of University of Venice, I designed, implemented and validated the A3 algorithm for automatic argumentative analysis of conversations. In this context, I organized the LIFT@home event, Human-Language Technology symposium as a joint event with the DART international conference. I also served as a member of the University Relations and Image Working Group on strategy for supporting research at Webster Geneva.

• Charge de cours at University of Geneva

  August 2008 - December 2009

  Research in the field of Services Science and in particular on Social Neworking Services, Mobile Information Systems and Pervasive Services. In this period I joined as a core members the ThinkServices think tank.

• Professor at European University

  January 2009 - June 2009

  Taught courses on Management Information Systems at bachelor and MBA level.

• Research Associate and lecturer at University of Fribourg

  November 2005 - December 2008

  I joined the PAI group (Pervasive and Artificial Intelligence) in November 2005. I was a senior research fellow and I have been teaching in several courses such as: Ubiquitous Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Programming in Java. In 2006-2008 I was principal investigator in a Swiss national research project uMove on new interaction paradigms based on motion-awareness (http://www.umove.ch), the Kinetic User Interface. I organized the MobiKUI workshop in 2008: http://u-move.blogspot.com/2008/06/mobikui-workshop_27.html The focus of my research was on Ubiquitous Computing, Multi-Agent Systems, Pervasive Collaboration, Human-Computer Interaction. I achieved the following results: 1. Development of a conceptual framework for the design and implementation of Kinetic User Interfaces. In this post-desktop type of interfaces, the users interact with computing system through motion in the physical space. This type of interface is already embodied in various systems such as Tangible Interfaces or Ambient Intelligence, but this was the first time that a general framework was proposed. 2. As an application of KUI, I invented a new collaboration schema which benefits where people can share tasks requests that can be executed in selected places and times. Acceptance and fulfillment of the task requirement can be done through kinetic interaction as well. As an example, my students implemented a scenario of collaborative shopping where items from a shared shopping list are dynamically assigned to individual that walk nearby grocery shops. The scenario, called Ubi-Shop, is illustrated in this video: http://youtu.be/x_DFY4EmyyA . Eventually, this model has been implemented by startups in US such as taskrabbit.com or Zaarly.com. However, they do not fully implement the kinetic interaction that were showcased in Ubi-Shop. 3. I developed a more rigorous definition of unobtrusiveness which lies at the foundation of Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence.

• Visiting Scholar at Stanford University

  August 2005 - November 2005

  Visiting scholar at the (CSLI) Computational Semantics Lab at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. I actively participated to the CALO project and in the development of a dialogue annotation tool called NOMOS.Some technology from the CALO project is part of the SIRI system. This visit resulted into the publication of a joint paper at the IJCAI 2005 workshop on Computational Models of Natural Arguments (CMNA).

• Researcher and Lecturer at EPFL

  August 2002 - October 2005

  From 2002 to 2004 I have been post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Artificial Intelligence laboratory of the School of Information and Communication Science. During this period I have been: - Member of the European FP5 project INSPIRE on Interaction through cpeech with consumer appliances. - Member of the Swiss NCCR IM2 on Interactive Multimodal Information Management. In 2005 I've been member of the Global Computing Center headed by Martin Rajman as a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer.

• Research Fellow at ICSI

  January 2004 - March 2005

  I spent one year at ICSI as a visiting researcher in the framework of the IM2 exchange program. I worked on the design of an ontology for the description of the dynamics of meetings. In particular I focused on meeting discussions oriented towards decision making and conflict resolution. The argumentative modeling of meeting discussions is particularly useful in Question-Answering and Summarization of meetings. The major achievements were the following: 1. Development of an integrated conceptual framework for the argumentative analysis of discussion. This work was then presented and published in the proceedings of the conference of ISSA (International Society for the Study of Argumentation) in 2006. 2. The development of an ontology based on Frame Semantics for creating metadata to be used for the indexing and retrieval of recorded discussions. This work resulted into two publications at LREC2004 and at ICEIS2004.

• Visiting Scholar and Music Producer at University of California, Berkeley

  January 2004 - December 2004

  I have been visiting the Department of Linguistics of UC Berkeley. I joined several classes and seminars in Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse Analysis and Philosophy of Language. Remarkably, I met Prof. Charles Fillmore (my supervisor), Prof. George Lakoff and Prof. John Searle. I also had the opportunity to work on a short movie project with director Beatrice Kobow for which I produced the original soundtrack. The movie is available here: https://vimeo.com/37789800 (ask me for the password if you want to watch it).

• Research Assistant and Lecturer at EPFL

  August 1998 - August 2002

  I joined EPFL as a Ph.D. student and I have been member of the Information and Communication Science Faculty for six years. I carried out my Ph.D. thesis work at the Theoretical Computer Science Laboratory headed by Prof. Giovanni Coray and I earned the Ph.D. degree in 2002. I have been also member of the MEDIA (Document Engineering) research group. I worked in 3 research projects: 1. RObust Text Analysis (SNF). I contributed to the development of robust methods for analysis of textual data using the LHIP parser. 2. Interaction through Speech with Information Systems (CTI). I developed the robust semantic parsing module of the ISIS system based on LHIP, which achieved a decent performance with a simple ruleset. 3. Hybrid Environment for Robust Analysis of Language Data (SNF). This project was the core of my PhD thesis and it was about developing a agent-based architecture for robust natural language understanding. It has been validated on Dialogue Systems and Intelligent Tutoring applications. At that time, this approach was quite innovative. Years later, a similar architecture has been developed by IBM and Apache: UIMA. During these years I've been also involved in teaching at undegraduate level: - Foundations of Programming Languages, - Multimedia Document Engineering, - Natural Language Processing and post-graduate level: - Language and Speech Engineering.

• Consultant at University of Pisa

  January 1998 - July 1998

  I was member of the Computer Science Department, research group on Knowledge Discovery and Deductive Databases (Prof. Turini and Prof. Pedreschi). I collaborated with CNR-CNUCE on two research projects: - DATASIFT project (market basket analysis) - Lotta all'evasione fiscale (tax fraud detection)

• Consultant at University of Pisa

  January 1995 - December 1997

  Collaboration with CISIAU (Interfaculty Center for Information Services in the Humanities Area) and Faculty of Political Science. Teaching assistantship in a course on "Document Informatics" (Informatica Documentale) given by Prof. Maria Simi and Prof. Silvano Antonelli. Involved in a research project financed by "Commissione Rettorale per la Storia dell'Universita" (Academic Senate Committee for the History of University) on the Statistical Processing of Historical Data of the University of Pisa. Co-author together with Dott. Danilo Barsanti, of two related books, published by the Pisa University Press (ETS).

• Consultant and Technical Instructor at Studio Proteo Snc.

  September 1989 - August 1991

  Taught courses for Professional Certification ("formazione professionale") in office automation, programming (COBOL, Clipper, C) and system management (OS370, Unix). Responsible of the design, development, and management of several business management applications (ERP and CRM) in Clipper and in Novell network environment.

• Analyst-Programmer and System Manager at SELCODATA Srl.

  March 1988 - September 1989

  IBM Agent for PC and Mini-systems (AS-400) Development of enterprise business applications (COBOL, Clipper, C), System Management (MS-DOS, Unix/Xenix) and Database Management (Oracle, DB2, DbaseIV). Responsible of the development of the following projects: - Blood donors database at the public hospital - Customization of a Bill-of-material module for "cut optimization" of cardboard boxes. - Setup and management of a networked ERP solution in Unix for beverages distribution.

• IT Consultant at Self-employed

  January 1988 - February 1988

  Designed and implemented several IT projects. Among the most interesting: 1. A system for taking orders and automatically generate bills for restaurants. The system also was able to automatically discharge items from the ingredients stock and generate alerts for low or out of stock ingredients. 2. Deployment of the infrastructure a medium-size point of sale (a CONAD grocery store) with 10 counters. Solved problem with transfer of legacy product database (COBOL) into a relational database.

• Analys, Developper and System Manager at Computime SE, Srl.

  September 1987 - December 1987

  Computime SE was a subsidiary of large Rome-based company (COMPUTIME) which was a Apple computer retailers and solution provider in Desktop Publishing, Office Automation and Design. I was in charge of the technical support and training for the Computime SE Apple-based solutions.

• Technician at COMPUTRONIC Snc.

  January 1987 - August 1987

  Technical support with Personal Computers and related software Development of personal business applications.

• Formateur at CEFCO Sarl

  October 2012

  Executive training in Project Management.

• Director at LeanStart

  May 2012

  I started the first "Lean Startup" consulting service in Switzerland providing strategic advising to startups and small and medium enterprises in business model research and design.

• Professor at UBIS -UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

  February 2012

  Undergraduate (BBA): MGMT 427 Operations and Project Management COMP 125 Computing Fundamentals MGMT 230 Organizational Behavior STAT 323 Research Methods and Statistics PSYCH 205 Social Psychology Graduate (MBA): MGT 605 Project Management for MBA MCO 607 Web Strategies for MBA MGT 601 Corporate Information Strategies for MBA MGT 603 Entrepreneurship MGT 604 Strategic Management MGT 606 Corporate Social Responsibility

• Core group member at ThinkServices

  January 2009

  Advocate of Service Design approach

Vincenzo Pallotta's Education:

• Universite de Fribourg/Universitat Freiburg

  2005 – 2014
  Habilitation

• Stanford University Graduate School of Business

  2012 – 2012
  Concentration: Technology Entrepreunership

• IT Training Academy

  2009 – 2010
  PMI PMP certification
  Concentration: Project Management

• IT Training Academy

  2009 – 2009
  PRINCE2 Foundation certification, ITIL v3 certification
  Concentration: Project Management

• CTI VentureLab

  2007 – 2007
  Certificate
  Concentration: Venture Challenge 2007

• Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne

  1998 – 2002
  Ph.D.
  Concentration: Computer Science

• University of Pisa

  1991 – 1997
  M.Sc. (Laurea magistrale)
  Concentration: Information (Computer) Science

• Linkoping University

  1994 – 1994
  ERASMUS
  Concentration: Computer Science

• Liceo Scientifico "A. Enstein", Teramo, Italy

  1981 – 1986
  Maturita Scientifica
  Concentration: Science and mathematics

• Scuola Media D'Alessandro Teramo

  1977 – 1980
  Diploma di Scuola Media Inferiore

Vincenzo Pallotta's Interests & Activities: