Short bio. is an Assistant Professor (RTDb) in Computer Vision at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Catania, where he also serves as teacher of Statistical Laboratory and Basics of Computing (MD in Data Science) and Programmazione 2 (BD in Computer Science). He has been working in the field of Computer Vision research since 2012, when he joined to the IPLab (Image Processing Laboratory). He obtained the Master Degree in Computer Science (summa cum laude) from the University of Catania in March 2015. Alessandro was awarded with the Archimede Prize for the excellence of academic career and research activity conferred by the University of Catania in 2015. Along the way he has done two research internships at STMicroelectronics in 2011/2012 and at TIM in 2015. In January 2019 he has achieved the PhD in Mathematics and Computer Science granted by TIM. The PhD thesis investigates several aspects related to Visual Sentiment Analysis applied on crowdsourced images/videos. Part of the PhD research has been spent at the Imperial College in London, under the supervision of Prof. Catarina Sismeiro, working on the analysis of social media advertising contents. His research interests lie in the fields of Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Multimedia. Alessandro is reviewer for several International Conferences and Journals, he is also involved in editorial activities of journals in the field of Computer Vision with different roles. He is an active member of several scientific associations and societeies, he is also member of the organizing committees of several international scientific events, including conferences, challenges, workshops and special issues. Alessandro is also member of several international associations/societies, IEEE Senior Member and member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, CVPL (Italian association fo the research in Computer Vision, Pattern recognition and machine Learning) and REPRISE ( expert reviewers for research projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research), among others.

Curriculum vitae (Italian | English)






September 2022 - now
Assistant Professor (RTDb)
University of Catania - Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Computer Vision and Machine Learning.
September 2020 - 2022
Research Fellow (RTDa)
University of Catania - Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Research Fellow - Algorithms and Technologies for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).
February 2019 - August 2020
Contract Researcher (post-doc)
University of Catania - Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Algorithms on Learning and Understanding of Multimedia Contents.
January 2017 - April 2017
Visiting Researcher (PhD student)
Imperial College London
Analysis of Social Media data for Sentiment Analysis and Engagement evaluation.
January 2015 - July 2015
Telecom Italia Research Internship
JOL Wave (Joint Open Lab - Wireless Applications in multi-deVice Ecosystems) JOL Wave site.
October 2011 - May 2012
ST Microelectronics Internship
ST Microelectronics, Catania site. ST site.



Projects

ARTES 5.0 - RESTART ITALY


ARTES 5.0 Advanced Robotics and enabling digital TEchnologies & systems 5.0 - RESTART ITALY - EU Call DIGITAL-2021-EDIH-01.
Partners: ARTES 4.0 (leader), MedITech, START 4.0, CINI, UNIMORE, SYMBOLA, INTELLERA, CICERO DIH, DIHCT, UDIH, DINTEC, EDI.it, PICO, PSTS-SIKELIA (UNICT, UNIPA, UNIME, UNIKORE).

JustSmart


"Giustizia Smart: Strumenti e modelli per ottimizzare il lavoro dei giudici - JustSmart" PON Governance e Capacita' Istituzionale 2014-2020. CUP B25F22000000001.
Partners: UNIPA (leader), UNICT, UNIME, UNICA, UNUME, UNISS.

ADAS+


ADAS+ - Sviluppo di Tecnologie e Sistemi Avanzati per la Sicurezza dell'Auto mediante piattaforme Advanced Driver Assistance System - PON Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020.
Partners: STMicroelectronic (leading), UNICT, INST, DMNS, DMN-CNR IPCF, DMN-UNIPA, UNICP, Innovaal, INN-CNNR IMM, INN-MR&D, MTA Advanced Automotive Solution, IU.NET, IU-UNIBO, IU-UNIMORE.

SATURN


SATURN - Smart mAnufacTURiNg - Progetto MISE PON Fabbrica Intelligente.
Partners: STMicroelectronics (leading), Mediterranea Impianti, UNICT.

DL4HEALTH


DL4HEALTH - Deep Learning for Health- PO FESR SICILIA 2014-2020 - Azione 1.1.5.
Partners: Quipo (leading), Net Service, Delisa, Aucta Cognitio, Nextra Consulting, UNICT Poli, UNICT DMI, Cerid.

SALIRE


SALIRE - Sound Algorithms for Low-latency Intelligent Recognition of Event - PO FESR SICILIA 2014-2020 - Azione 1.1.5.
Partners: Trilogic srl (leading), Noviacom soc.coop., Medilink srl, UNICT.

Farm.PRO


Farm.PRO - Design and development of a web based learning platform (Farm.PRO project - PO/FESR Misura 4.1.1.1)
Partners: UNICT, Federfarma.

Food Recognition Technology


Eclat SRL - Food Recognition Technology - CoEHAR project founded by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW COE1-05).
Partners: UNICT, Eclat SRL.

SenseQuit

SenseQuit: A novel smart smoking monitoring system - CoEHAR project founded by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (EG-008 EU-PATH_RFP).
Partners: UNICT, Eclat SRL.

SmokeSense

Eclat SRL - Evaluation of methods for automatic smoke activity detection.
Partners: UNICT, Eclat SRL.

Publications

Google Scholar profile link.
Scopus profile link.
ORCID profile link.

Warning: the following information is retrieved in real-time through the Elsevier Scopus APIs and Google Scholar. If you notice something weird, please notify me at ortis@dmi.unict.it


Citation Summary

Google
Scholar

Scopus
Citations : 535 384
H-Index : 14 11
Documents : 48 39

Documents

Title: Methods for Sentiment Analysis and Social Media Popularity of Crowdsourced Visual Contents
Authors: Ortis A.
Source: PhD Thesis
Published: 2019


Title: Methods and systems for the treatment of stereoscopic images, corresponding computer program products, and storage carrier
Authors: Rundo, Francesco; Digiore, Giuseppe; Ortis, Alessandro; Battiato, Sebastiano;
Source: US Patent
Published: 2015


Type: Journal
Title: Methods, Developments, and Technological Innovations for Population Surveys
View in Scopus
Authors: Tomaselli V., Battiato S., Ortis A., Cantone G.G., Urso S., Polosa R..
Source: Social Science Computer Review
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2022-08-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Recognition of Complex Gestures for Real-Time Emoji Assignment
View in Scopus
Authors: Zuccara R., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2022-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Mixup Data Augmentation for COVID-19 Infection Percentage Estimation
View in Scopus
Authors: Napoli Spatafora M.A., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2022-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: User-Biased Food Recognition for Health Monitoring
View in Scopus
Authors: Hussain M., Ortis A., Polosa R., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2022-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Towards an Efficient Facial Image Compression with Neural Networks
View in Scopus
Authors: Napoli Spatafora M.A., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2022-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Fooling a Face Recognition System with a Marker-Free Label-Consistent Backdoor Attack
View in Scopus
Authors: Cauli N., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2022-01-01


Type: Journal
Title: Advanced eNose-Driven Pedestrian Tracking Pipeline for Intelligent Car Driver Assisting System: Preliminary Results
View in Scopus
Authors: Rundo F., Anfuso I., Amore M.G., Ortis A., Messina A., Conoci S., Battiato S..
Source: Sensors
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2022-01-01


Type: Journal
Title: A benchmark evaluation of adaptive image compression for multi picture object stereoscopic images
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Grisanti M., Rundo F., Battiato S..
Source: Journal of Imaging
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2021-08-01


Type: Journal
Title: Exploiting objective text description of images for visual sentiment analysis
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., Torrisi G., Battiato S..
Source: Multimedia Tools and Applications
Cited by (Scopus): 11
Published: 2021-06-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Best Poster Award
Title: Food Recognition for Dietary Monitoring during Smoke Quitting
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Caponnetto P., Giudice O., Hussain M., Leotta R., Ortis A., Polosa R..
Source: Proceedings of the International Conference on Image Processing and Vision Engineering, IMPROVE 2021
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2021-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Fine-Grained Image Classification for Pollen Grain Microscope Images
View in Scopus
Authors: Trenta F., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2021-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Pollen Grain Classification Challenge 2020: Challenge Report
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Guarnera F., Ortis A., Trenta F., Ascari L., Siniscalco C., De Gregorio T., Suarez E..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2021-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Real-Time Thermal Face Identification System for Low Memory Vision Applications Using CNN
View in Scopus
Authors: Devaram R.R., Ortis A., Battiato S., Bruna A.R., Tomaselli V..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2021-01-01


Type: Journal
Title: A review on food recognition technology for health applications
View in Scopus
Authors: Allegra D., Battiato S., Ortis A., Urso S., Polosa R..
Source: Health Psychology Research
Cited by (Scopus): 7
Published: 2020-12-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: Benchmarking of computer vision algorithms for driver monitoring on automotive-grade devices
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Conoci S., Leotta R., Ortis A., Rundo F., Trenta F..
Source: 2020 AEIT International Conference of Electrical and Electronic Technologies for Automotive, AEIT AUTOMOTIVE 2020
Cited by (Scopus): 2
Published: 2020-11-18


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: POLLEN13K: A Large Scale Microscope Pollen Grain Image Dataset
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Ortis A., Trenta F., Ascari L., Politi M., Siniscalco C..
Source: Proceedings - International Conference on Image Processing, ICIP
Cited by (Scopus): 11
Published: 2020-10-01


Type: Journal
Top Downloaded Paper Recognition
Title: Survey on visual sentiment analysis
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., Battiato S..
Source: IET Image Processing
Cited by (Scopus): 19
Published: 2020-06-19


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: Detection and classification of pollen grain microscope images
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Ortis A., Trenta F., Ascari L., Politi M., Siniscalco C..
Source: IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops
Cited by (Scopus): 17
Published: 2020-06-01


Type: Journal
Title: A report on smoking detection and quitting technologies
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Caponnetto P., Polosa R., Urso S., Battiato S..
Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Cited by (Scopus): 10
Published: 2020-04-01


Type: Journal
Title: Predicting social image popularity dynamics at time zero
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., Battiato S..
Source: IEEE Access
Cited by (Scopus): 9
Published: 2019-01-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: Advanced multi-neural system for cuff-less blood pressure estimation through nonlinear HC-features
View in Scopus
Authors: Rundo F., Ortis A., Battiato S., Conoci S..
Source: ICETE 2019 - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications
Cited by (Scopus): 3
Published: 2019-01-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: An overview on image sentiment analysis: Methods, datasets and current challenges
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., Battiato S..
Source: ICETE 2019 - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications
Cited by (Scopus): 10
Published: 2019-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: The impact of padding on image classification by using pre-trained convolutional neural networks
View in Scopus
Authors: Tang H., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 4
Published: 2019-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Generalised gradient vector flow for content-aware image resizing
View in Scopus
Authors: Rotondo T., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2019-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Prediction of social image popularity dynamics
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 1
Published: 2019-01-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: Visual sentiment analysis based on on objective text description of images
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., Torrisi G., Battiato S..
Source: Proceedings - International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing
Cited by (Scopus): 11
Published: 2018-10-30


Type: Journal
Title: Evaluation of Levenberg-Marquardt neural networks and stacked autoencoders clustering for skin lesion analysis, screening and follow-up
View in Scopus
Authors: Rundo F., Conoci S., Banna G.L., Ortis A., Stanco F., Battiato S..
Source: IET Computer Vision
Cited by (Scopus): 27
Published: 2018-10-01


Type: Journal
Title: Advanced bio-inspired system for noninvasive cuff-less blood pressure estimation from physiological signal analysis
View in Scopus
Authors: Rundo F., Ortis A., Battiato S., Conoci S..
Source: Computation
Cited by (Scopus): 38
Published: 2018-09-01


Type: Journal
Title: An advanced bio-inspired photoplethysmography (PPG) and ECG pattern recognition system for medical assessment
View in Scopus
Authors: Rundo F., Conoci S., Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Sensors (Switzerland)
Cited by (Scopus): 94
Published: 2018-02-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: Autonomous landing of a uav on a moving vehicle for the mbzirc
View in Scopus
Authors: Cantelli L., Guastella D.C., Melita C.D., Muscato G., Battiato S., D'urso F., Farinella G.M., Ortis A., Santoro C..
Source: Human-Centric Robotics- Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines, CLAWAR 2017
Cited by (Scopus): 5
Published: 2018-01-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: NewsVallum: Semantics-Aware Text and Image Processing for Fake News Detection system
View in Scopus
Authors: Armano G., Battiato S., Bennato D., Boratto L., Carta S.M., Noia T.D., Sciascio E.D., Ortis A., Recupero D.R..
Source: CEUR Workshop Proceedings
Cited by (Scopus): 0
Published: 2018-01-01


Type: Journal
Title: Organizing egocentric videos of daily living activities
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., D'Amico V., Addesso L., Torrisi G., Battiato S..
Source: Pattern Recognition
Cited by (Scopus): 27
Published: 2017-12-01


Type: Book Series
Title: A system for autonomous landing of a UAV on a moving vehicle
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Cantelli L., D'Urso F., Farinella G.M., Guarnera L., Guastella D., Melita C.D., Muscato G., Ortis A., Ragusa F., Santoro C..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 7
Published: 2017-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Organizing videos streams for clustering and estimation of popular scenes
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Farinella G.M., Milotta F.L.M., Ortis A., Stanco F., D'Amico V., Addesso L., Torrisi G..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 3
Published: 2017-01-01


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: Organizing egocentric videos for daily living monitoring
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., D'Amico V., Addesso L., Torrisi G., Battiato S..
Source: LTA 2016 - Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Lifelogging Tools and Applications, co-located with ACM Multimedia 2016
Cited by (Scopus): 10
Published: 2016-10-16


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: The social picture
View in Scopus
Authors: Battiato S., Farinella G.M., Milotta F.L.M., Ortis A., Addesso L., Casella A., D'Amico V., Torrisi G..
Source: ICMR 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval
Cited by (Scopus): 11
Published: 2016-06-06


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: RECfusion: Automatic video curation driven by visual content popularity
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Farinella G.M., D'Amico V., Addesso L., Torrisi G., Battiato S..
Source: MM 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Multimedia Conference
Cited by (Scopus): 19
Published: 2015-10-13


Type: Conference Proceeding
Title: A new fast matching method for adaptive compression of stereoscopic images
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Battiato S..
Source: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Cited by (Scopus): 6
Published: 2015-01-01


Type: Book Series
Title: Adaptive compression of stereoscopic images
View in Scopus
Authors: Ortis A., Rundo F., Di Giore G., Battiato S..
Source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Cited by (Scopus): 16
Published: 2013-10-03