About Me
I'm Associate Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania, Italy. My research is focused on the design and development of Metaheuristics, and their integration and combination with Machine Learning methods, applied in several research areas, such as Optimization; Complex Networks; Computational Biology; Forecasting and Detection tasks; Groups Collective Behaviors.
Since January 2023 I'm Editor-in-Chief of the young journal International Journal of Swarm Intelligence (IJSI), and currently I'm Associate Editor for the journals Soft Computing, Frontiers in Big Data and Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, and I'm member of Editorial Boards of several international journals. I'm also member of the program committee for many important international conferences and workshops, mainly in the field of evolutionary computation.
Over the years, I have acquired an extensive experience in organizing successful international conferences, and summer schools. In particular I'm currently the founder and Chief of the Scientific Directors of the Metaheuristics Summer School (MESS). Thanks to this long experience, I have established several fruitful international research collaborations over the years.
Recently I has been invited as a Keynote Speaker for the international conference INTIS 2024 (12th International Conference on New Technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Smart Data), and over the years I has participated as Tutorial Speaker and/or Invited Speaker in several international conferences. I'm also editor of several special issues in renowned international journals in the field, such as International Transactions in Operational Research; Applied Soft Computing; Swarm and Evolutionary Computation; BMC Immunology; Artificial Life and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, and I have been invited to act as reviewer for several national and international research projects, as well as external reviewer for several international PhD theses.
Today I'm Scientific co-Director of the research group "Complex Intelligent Systems" at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Catania.
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Teaching News
27th August 2024:
Si avvisa che Martedì 3 Settembre dalle 9:00 alle 12:00 in aula 23 avranno inizio le lezioni di tutorato di Sistemi Operativi per entrambi i canali (AL & MZ) e proseguiranno nei giorni 6, 10 e 12 c.m., sempre allo stesso orario. Le successive date verranno comunicate durante le lezioni.
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Research News
21th March 2024:
I have been invited to be Plenary Speaker at the INTIS 2024 - 12th International Conference on New Technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Smart Data (30-31 May & 01 June 2024, Tangier, Morocco). My plenary talk will be entitled: "Metaheuristics & Machine Learning: how one enhances the other".
Announcements
8th March 2024:
I'm proud to announce that our research work entitled "Group Dynamics in Memory-Enhanced Ant Colonies: The Influence of Colony Division on a Maze Navigation Problem" and accepted in Algorithms, has been selected by the editors as the cover of the volume 17 issue 2 of Algorithms!!
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Research
My research is focused on the design and development of metaheuristics and nature inspired methodologies for combinatorial optimization problems and in the research area of computational & systems biology. In particular, in these years my research works have been mainly focused on community detection in social and biological networks; integration between metaheuristics and machine learning; combinatorial optimization problems; dynamic interactions detection in social behaviours; parameters extraction in biological networks (Gene Regulatory Network in the S-system model); protein structure prediction in the HP model; and functions optimization.
Have a look also in our research group activities.
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Scopus Citations: 1065 —
h-index: 17
(last updated: Nov. 1, 2024)
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Google Scholar Citations: 1670 —
h-index: 20 — i10-index: 33
(last updated: Nov. 1, 2024)
Recent Publications
A. Mezzina, L. Naso, and M. Pavone, "Retrieval Augmented Generation with Iterative Critique: A Framework for Structured Task Solving", Intelligent Systems & Decision Making: Human Insights in the Era of AI (ISC 2025), LNCS, 2026.
C. Cavallaro, V. Cutello, and M. Pavone, "Minimal and Stable Feedback Arc Sets and Graph Centrality Measures", Computers & Operations Research, 2025.
F. Zito, E.G. Talbi, C. Cavallaro, V. Cutello, and M. Pavone, "Metaheuristics in Automated Machine Learning: Strategies for Optimization", Intelligent Systems with Applications, 2025.
F. Zito, V. Cutello, and M. Pavone, "Data-Driven Forecasting and Its Role in Enhanced Decision-Making", Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2025.
V. Cutello, A. Mezzina, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "A Weighted Binary String Benchmark to Assess the Efficiency of Stochastic Search Processes", 16th International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI 2025), LNCS, 2026.
S. Rezaie, E.M. Khaneghah, M. Pavone, M. Hajirajabi, R. Safari, A. Suvizi, and A.R. Showkatabad, "OutExaRD: Enhancing Resource Discovery for Support Dynamic and Interactive Events on Out-of-Distributed Exascale Systems", International Journal of Networked and Distributed Computing, 2025.
C. Crespi, A. Cangelosi, M. Pavone, and M. Romeo, "Modeling Trust Dynamics on a Multi-Agent System", International Conference on Optimzation and Learning (OLA), CCIS Springer, 2025.
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Events in Progress
International Conference on Optimization and Learning, OLA 2023, 3-5 May 2023, Malaga, Spain
The Distributed Ghost: Cellular Automata, Distributed Dynamical Systems, and Their Applications to Intelligence, workshop at ALIFE 2023,
July 27, 2023, Sapporo, Japan.
(Chairs: S. Nichele, H. Sayama, C. Nehaniv, E. Medvet, & M. Pavone)
4th International Conference on Computational Intelligence (ICCI 2023),
4-5 Nov. 2023, South Asian University Campus, New Delhi.
(Chairs: R. Tiwari, M. Pavone, & M. Saraswat)
2023 IEEE Symposium on Immune Computation (IEEE IComputation), part of IEEE SSCI 2023,
5-8 Dec. 2023, Mexico City, Mexico.
(Chairs: U. Aickelin, L. Jiao, W. Luo, & M. Pavone)
"Metaheuristics: Recent Advances and Applications", special issue in International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) - Editors: Luca Di Gaspero, Paola Festa, Amir Nakib, Mario Pavone, & Mauricio Resende
Metaheuristics Summer School - MESS 2024, "Optimization & Machine Learning meet High-Performance Computing", 15-18 July 2024, Catania, Italy
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Current teaching
Artificial & Swarm Intelligence, MSc degree in Computer Science (LM18), University of Catania
Heuristics & Metaheuristics for Optimization & Learning, MSc degree in Computer Science (LM18), University of Catania
Operating Systems, BASc degree in Computer Science (L31), University of Catania
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