rdipietro

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

- Robert Frost

Short Educational Bio

Riccardo Di Pietro was born on August 15th, 1986, in a small village in the southern countryside of the city of Messina called San Filippo Inferiore.
Son of a civil servant and a housewife, he is the second of three children (two sisters, Maria, the oldest and Patrizia, the youngest).

He received his High School Diploma in Computer Science from the State Industrial Technical Institute (ITIS) "Verona-Trento" of Messina in 2005, his Higher Technical Education and Training Diploma in ICT Technologies (the Italian "Corso IFTS"), and his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with Specialization in "Networks and Distributed Systems" at the University of Messina, Italy, in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

He received his Master of Science in Computer Science, his 2nd level Professional Master's Programme in "Open Source and Information Security" and his Master of Engineering in Computer Engineering from the University of Messina, Italy, in 2013, 2014, and 2016, respectively.

On September 18th, 2020, he received his Ph.D. in "Mathematics and Computer Science" from the University of Catania, Italy, under Prof. Salvatore Distefano, with a thesis entitled "Smart Computing for a New Society: How Cloud and IoT Technologies Can Improve Education, Security and Support Decision-Making Processes".

In October 2020, he completed his Higher Training course on "Project Management in Information Systems" at the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy.

In November 2020, he started attending the learning activities of the 2nd level Professional Master's Programme in "Intelligence and ICT" at the University of Udine, for which, following a competition based on qualifications and interview, he had obtained one of the partial scholarships made available by the university committee.

Short Professional Bio

From December 2013 to November 2016, he worked as a Java Software Developer at the Mobile and Distributed Systems Lab (MDSLab) at the Engineering Department of the University of Messina. During these years, he was involved in several R & D projects in the ICT area, such as "Next-FFM" and "SIGMA. Next-FFM was an R & D industrial project focused on power grids maintenance; SIGMA was an R & D national project focused on Cloud computing and sensor networks. Moreover, he was actively involved in some consulting, design, and software development activities in collaboration with "Xenia Progetti" s.r.l., "Meridionale Impianti" s.r.l. and Finmeccanica/Leonardo.

All these activities allowed him to gain significant competencies in the design and development of distributed systems for IoT, Cloud computing, and Mobile applications based on client-server and REST API paradigms.

In those years, aiming to promote the ideas underlying the Third Mission of the universities, he was the creator and protagonist of numerous pro bono activities. Some teaching and seminar activities, for national and international students, focused on Arduino technologies, aimed at university courses, high school courses, summer courses, and workshops in collaboration with Fablab Messina.

From January 2015 to June 2016, he was a tireless supporter and propagandist of the #SmartME project. In particular, he dealt with the dissemination in the pre- and post-funding phase, submitting the application form to the Eppela platform, and the rapid prototyping of the Box of the IoT nodes, which represented part of the outputs of the project. The #SmartME project was a crowdfunded project born from a dream of a team of researchers in the Mobile and Distributed Systems Lab (MDSLab) at UniMe. The project aimed to encourage a conversation with the municipality of Messina to spur the creation of a novel virtual ecosystem based upon the paradigm of the Internet of Things (IoT). (more info at http://smartme.unime.it/)

From December 2016 to December 2019, he was involved in the IOT-OPEN.EU Erasmus+ project. The project was funded under the Erasmus+ program KA2 (Strategic Partnership for Higher Education). The proposing consortium was composed of experienced researchers and educators from five European countries. The consortium was led by the Silesian University of Technology and was composed by SUT (Poland, Gliwice) - Silesian University of Technology; TMO (Russia, Sankt Petersburg) - National Research University of Information Technologies Mechanics and Optics; ITT (Estonia, Tallinn) - ITT Group; RTU (Latvia, Riga) - Riga Technical University; University of Messina; TUT (Estonia, Tallinn) - Tallinn University of Technology. The project was a great success. Many virtual laboratories were built in Europe, including one located in the Engineering Department of the University of Messina. Some video lessons were made within MOOC platforms, which were published, among others, also on the prestigious online platform EDX.org. More, two books were made as well as some scientific publications related to the project activities. On February 20th, 2020, more than 5000 students from 119 countries enrolled in the IOT-OPEN.EU online courses hosted via EDX.org. (more info at http://iot-open.eu/)

In March 2017, he carried out some teaching activities at the MIFT Department ("Programmazione II" course) and the Engineering Department ("Sistemi di Elaborazione" course) of the University of Messina.

In November 2017, the University of Messina awarded him the role of Honorary Fellow in the Italian Scientific-Disciplinary Sector ING-INF/05 (Italian "Cultore della Materia") for three years.

In July 2017, he passed the government exam and licensed as a Profession Engineer for the Information Technology field. 

In May 2018, he joined the Order of Italian Engineering - Branch of Messina (Italy), in Section "A" (Information Technology field).

In January 2018, he joined the University of Messina with a position of Technical Officer, with a contract of indefinite duration, in the area of Technical Scientific and Data Processing.

From January 2018 to February 2019, he served at the Center for Information Technologies at the University of Messina (CIAM - Centro Informatico Ateneo di Messina) in the Operative Unit “Innovazione e Formazione” under the Organization Unit “Innovazione, Ricerca e Formazione”. There, he was engaged in the design and development of Information Systems, and in Research, Innovation, and Training activities. 

From February 2019 till today, he serves at the Department of "Ancient and Modern Civilizations" (DICAM - Dipartimento di Civiltà Antiche e Moderne) at the University of Messina.