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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Google Scholar Citations: 1420 —
h-index: 17 — i10-index: 23
(last updated: Jun. 23, 2023)
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Scopus Citations: 1205 —
h-index: 16
(last updated: Jun. 23, 2023)
Recent Publications
V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "Improving an Immune-Inspired Algorithm by Linear Regression: a case study on Network Reliability", Knowledge-Based Systems, 2024.
V. Cutello, A. Mezzina, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "A Real-Time Adaptive Tabu Search for Handling Zoom In/Out in Map Labeling Problem", 18th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN conference (LION), 2024.
C. Cavallaro, V. Cutello, and M. Pavone, "Efficient vertex linear orderings to find minimal Feedback Arc Sets (minFAS)", 18th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN conference (LION), 2024.
F. Zito, V. Cutello, and M. Pavone, "A General-Purpose Neural Architecture Search Algorithm for building Deep Neural Networks", 15th Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC), 2024.
C. Cavallaro, C. Crespi, V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "Group Dynamics in Memory-Enhanced Ant Colonies: The Influence of Colony Division on a Maze Navigation Problem", Algorithms, 2024.
C. Cavallaro, V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "Machine Learning and Genetic Algorithms: a fast algorithm for image reconstruction", Knowledge-Based Systems, 2023.
M. Aslan, and M. Pavone, "MBVS: A modified binary vortex search algorithm for solving uncapacitated facility location problem", Neural Computing and Applications, 2023.
V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "A Machine Learning Approach to Simulate Gene Expression and Infer Gene Regulatory Networks", Entropy, 2023 (Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications, 2022).
C. Crespi, R.A. Scollo, G. Fargetta, and M. Pavone, "A Sensitivity Analysis of Parameters in an Agent-Based Model for Crowd Simulations", Applied Soft Computing, 2023.
C. Cavallaro, V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "Discovering Anomalies in Big Data: a review focused on the Application of Metaheuristics and Machine Learning Techniques", Frontiers in Big Data, section Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, 2023.
C. Cavallaro, V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "A Tabu Search Algorithm for the Map Labeling Problem", XVII International Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation (WIVACE), CCIS Springer, 2023.
V. Cutello, M. Pavone, and F. Zito, "Inferring a Gene Regulatory Network from Gene Expression Data. An Overview of Best Methods and a Reverse Engineering Approach", From Computational Logic to Computational Biology, LNCS Springer, 2023.
C. Crespi, and M. Pavone, "Does a group's size affect the behavior of a crowd? An analysis based on an agent model", 18th Social Simulation Conference (SSC), Springer proceedings, 2023.
F. Zito, V. Cutello, and M. Pavone, "Deep Learning and Metaheuristic for Multivariate Time-Series Forecasting", 18th International Conference on Soft Computing Models in Industrial and Environmental Applications (SOCO), Springer proceedings, 2023.
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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
Heuristics & Metaheuristics for Optimization & Learning, MSc degree in Computer Science, University of Catania
Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence, MSc degree in Computer Science, University of Catania
Operating Systems, BASc degree in Computer Science, University of Catania
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