Project Specific Grants 2012

FBK, in partnership with the University of Trento,  is offering the following project specific grants for research activities to be carried out within our labs. Interested applicants are invited to get in contact with the reference person indicated for each grant, to know more about the research topic and the grant application procedure.

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Computer Science

Natural Language Processing (4). This topic includes the following areas:

(i) Event and presuppositions: This PhD grant will focus on a pivotal aspect of natural language, namely presuppositions, which represent a part of the linguistic information assumed as known in the interpretation of sentences in a discourse. Presuppositions play an important role in conversation, because they put constraints on the legitimate inferences in the text; therefore, managing them is crucial in natural processing tasks which involve semantics and discourse analysis. Over the last years, several computational approaches to presuppositions have been proposed (among others Bos 2003, MacCartney&Manning 2007). However, many issues still remain open, especially those regarding the process of inheritance from individual to complex presuppositions, automatic acquisition and applications to open-domain.The successful candidate will have a good honors degree/Masters degree in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, or a related discipline.
Contact: popescu@fbk.eu
(ii) Event processing: Research on events and event relations has deserved increasing attention in the Natural Language Processing community. Existing approaches to content processing including named entity recognition, semantic role labelling and anaphora resolution have focused on single phenomena at entity level, and have failed so far to integrate this information in a general framework in which single annotations are put in relation following temporal or causal constraints. This PhD program will develop new tools and techniques for the recognition of events and their participants in texts, and for the identification of temporal and causal relations between events in different domains (narrative texts, financial news, etc.). The candidate should have good programming skills (Python, Perl, Php, Java or Prolog) and should ideally hold a Master degree in Computational Linguistics or similar. Knowledge of existing frameworks for event and semantic role annotation (TimeML, FrameNet) is a strong plus.
Contact: satonelli@fbk.eu
(iii) Component based textual entailment: This PhD grant will explore novel approaches for textual semantic inferences (Dagan et al. 2009) based on component-based textual entailment. The goal is to experiment how both general entailment algorithms (e.g. graph transformations, tree edit distance), knowledge resources (e.g. WordNet, Wikipedia) and specific inference components (e.g. temporal, causal) interact each other when trying to establish an entailment relation between two portions of text.
We build on top of our previous research (Cabrio, 2011) and we intend to take advantage of the Textual Entailment Open Platform under development within the EU project Excitement, where FBK participates as the Scientific Coordinator. References: a) Ido Dagan, Bill Dolan, Bernardo Magnini and Dan Roth: Recognizing textual entailment: Rational, evaluation and approaches, Journal of Natural Language Engineering, Volume 15, issue 04, pp. i-xvii Cambridge University Press. b) Elena Cabrio: Component-Based textual Entailment: A Modular and Linguistically-Motivated Framework for Semantic Inferences, PhD Thesis, 2011.
Contact: magnini@fbk.eu
(iv) Automatic information extraction over the tourism domain: Knowledge extraction, modelling and reasoning are key concepts while defining new added value domain-oriented services. To automatically construct an ontology it is necessary to detect the concepts and relations related to the domain. From the information extraction point of view, it is necessary to extract the textual mentions that make reference to the concepts and relations considered in the ontology, as well as having a natural language dictionary for its representation. In this sense, the topics of named entity recognition, named entity clustering, relation extraction, relation labelling, among others, are involved in this task. This grant aims at investigating automatic novel information extraction techniques over the tourism domain. Skills requirements: Basic principles on Named Entity Recognition, Named Entity Clustering, Relation Extraction, Knowledge Representation and ontologies. Language: Italian and English.
Contact: magnini@fbk.eu

Renewable distributed energy systems: analysis, management, and optimization (2). This topic includes the following areas:

(i) Distributed energy generation: analysis and optimization tools: Distributed energy resources such as domestic cogeneration plants are an important topic in the field of renewable energies. A crucial aspect in this context is the identification of suitable tools for system analysis and optimization. A useful framework to tackle this problem is given by multi-objective optimization tools. In a multi-objective system the main goal is to find the Pareto-efficient frontier, corresponding to the parameter space points for which none of the variables can be further improved without worsening at least one of the others. Pareto points can be then classified through a suitable aggregate objective function, typically based on cost-efficiency considerations. The availability of accurate data on system performances is clearly an essential prerequisite for the exploitation of these tools, which typically benefit of an interdisciplinary approach.
Possible research topics for this grant are: a) Development and testing of optimization algorithms applied to the performance evaluation of domestic plants; b) Analysis of distributed system networks; c) Creation/expansion of data bases for distributed energy systems
Contact: cozzini@fbk.eu
(ii) Off grid Energy Management of Complex distributed systems: The candidate should develop a research for the proper integration between different m-CHP technologies, storage solutions and sustainable systems for distributed energy generation (building, districts, communities). The methodology should take into account energy saving strategies and the end user active participation. Energy efficiency will be also envisaged. The objective will be the identification of a specific solution for a fully integrated, hybrid system enabling off-grid solutions, from models, measures and controls, algorithms and specific strategies.
Contact: crema@fbk.eu

Speech transcription and machine translation (2). This topic includes the following areas:

(i) Machine translation for CAT: Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools are well established as the dominant technology in the market of translation and localization services, whose worldwide demand has dramatically increased in the last decade. Recent achievements by the so-called statistical machine translation (MT) approach have raised increasing expectations for improving CAT tools, among both research and industry. The candidate will team up a world-class research effort on MT to push what is considered the new frontier of CAT technology, that is how to effectively and ergonomically integrate statistical MT within the human translation workflow.

Objectives are to advance the state-of-the-art by making statistical MT technology aware of its use, self-tuning to the domain, adapting to the corrections and implicit feedback by the user, and providing useful information to the user.
Contact: bertoldi@fbk.eu
(ii) Speech transcription and translation for multimedia content: The production of multilingual content now far outpaces our ability to translate it by human effort and we must turn to automatic methods to cope. At the same time, the growing availability of large volumes of data make automatic learning approaches for better transcription and translation feasible and indeed quite successful. The candidate will team up a world-class research effort developing automatic transcription and translation technology that will permit the development of innovative multimedia captioning and translation services of multimedia documents between many languages. Scientific challenges are to advance adaptation and robustness of speech recognition and machine translation, to develop streaming technology that can convert speech from lectures, seminars, meetings, telephone conversations into streamed text in another language.
Contact: falavi@fbk.eu

Internet of Services (2). This topic includes the following areas:

(i) Internet of Services: Internet of Service (IoS) is a novel and promising research line that is gaining more and more interest among the research community and whose enormous potential has been clearly recognized by the industry. The main challenge of IoS is to give to billions of interested users a transparent, seamless, and trustworthy access to the millions of services available on the Web and on mobile phones. This problem cannot be handled by simply extending existing serviced-oriented approaches, since it requires a paradigm shift from software services to real world services, from application-centered services to user-centered services, from Intranet to Internet.The research effort will be to investigate novel approaches to service composition, centered on the user, her activities and her goals, providing methodologies and techniques to develop services that will be able to be composed, contextualized and customized to any situation and user’s needs.
The PhD program will take place at SOA (http://soa.fbk.eu/), the Service Oriented Applications research unit within Fondazione Bruno Kessler.
Contact: pistore@fbk.eu
(ii) Adaptation of Service-Based Applications: One of the key advantages of the service oriented paradigm is the capability to reduce the development and maintenance cost of software applications without loosing the control of their quality and the capability of managing their lifecycle. This capability depends also on the capability of service oriented applications to adapt, i.e., to modify their behavior and to evolve in order to satisfy new requirements and to fit new situations. Despite the exiting research activities in this area, adaptivity of service-based applications remains one of the most significant and challenging open problems of service oriented computing.
The research effort will be to investigate novel approaches methodologies and techniques to support adaptation of service-based applications.
The PhD program will take place at SOA (http://soa.fbk.eu/), the Service Oriented Applications research unit within Fondazione Bruno Kessler.
Contact: pistore@fbk.eu

Automated Security Analysis and Enforcement in Distributed Applications (1)

Current research at the Security & Trust Research Unit at FBK is focused on the development of techniques and tools for the automatic security analysis of and enforcement in security-critical, distributed applications (e.g. web-based security protocols, access control policies, business processes).
Contact: armando@fbk.eu

Mining and Visualizing Web (2.0) Applications (1)

In an information technology society that is increasingly relying on software, web applications are becoming ubiquitous. While for "traditional" software systems the problem of understanding their evolution --to ease their maintenance-- is a popular research topic, in the case of web (and especially web 2.0) applications software evolution is largely unexplored. The successful PhD candidate will investigate how mining, analyzing and visualizing information stored in software repositories (e.g., historical data from version control systems, defects data from bug trackers) --proven to be effective for understanding the evolution of traditional software-- can be adapted and extended to the rapidly evolving domain of web (2.0) applications.
Contact: tonella@fbk.eu

Audio signal processing for music information retrival (1)

The research focus on audio signal processing for music information retrieval. Under the FBK-SHINE research unit, an established framework is available for audio chord estimation, beat tracking and tempo extraction. The related technology has been benchmarked successfully under MIREX competitions of the last years. The purpose of this PhD investigation is to progress on these tasks, increasing the size of the chord set, extracting a more detailed rhythm structure, and addressing different music styles (e.g., jazz). Another goal is to expand this framework, addressing problems as cover song identification, instrument separation, score transcription, and music information retrieval.
Candidates should meet the following requirements:
- Degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or Computer Science.
- Studies should have been completed efficiently, recently, and with an above of average mark.
- Advanced knowledge in Signal Processing, Audio and Speech Processing, and Speech Recognition.
- Good knowledge of music theory.
- Programming experience in C/C++, Matlab or Octave, Perl in the Unix environment.
- Good English knowledge.
More information about MIREX are available at http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/MIREX_HOME
See also http://shine.fbk.eu for additional information about the research being conducted under the FBK-SHINE unit.
Contact: omologo@fbk.eu

Neuroinformatics - Machine Learning for Neuroscience (2)

The PhD research program aims at carrying out research activity on machine learning methodologies for neuroscientific data analysis. The main goal is design and deploy machine learning algorithms for cognitive neuroscience investigations based on neuroimaging. The research effort focuses on three specific tasks: brain decoding, brain mapping and brain connectivity. The challenge is to design effective computational methods for multivariate pattern analysis.
The PhD research program will take place at NILab, the Neuroinformatics Laboratory raised as a joint initiative of Fondazione Bruno Kessler and the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento.
Contact: avesani@fbk.eu

Formal verification and planning of Industrial Critical Systems (2)

The quality of critical systems must be guaranteed with effective analysis tools. The activity will aim at the development of formal techniques for model-based verification and safety assessment of critical systems, in the different phases of the development process. Topics of interest include requirements analysis, model checking, temporal logics, compositional reasoning, run-time monitoring, and planning. The specific research directions will be identified within the fields of formal safety assessment for hybrid autonomous systems, and will include aspects related to their certification.
Contact: cimatti@fbk.eu

Information extraction for ontology engineering (1)

Albeit the growing maturity of ontological engineering tools, ontology knowledge acquisition remains a highly manual and complex task, that can easily hinder the ontology building process. In spite of the efforts and progresses made in automatic ontology learning, state of the art methods and tools still mainly focus on the extraction of terms, with few exceptions addressing more complex tasks such as the extraction of (possibly hierarchical) relations, and axioms. Thus the performances of the current algorithms appear to be more suitable to support the construction of light-weight medium-quality ontologies, rather than good quality conceptualizations of a domain according to the good practices in ontology modeling. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how to combine work in automatic ontology learning, which is mainly based on Natural Language processing, information extraction, statistics, and machine learning techniques, and work in methodologies and tools for manual knowledge engineering to produce (semi)-automatic services for ontology learning better supporting the construction of rich and good quality ontologies. The work will start from an investigation of the current techniques available in the field of Natural Language processing and their comparison with the requirements coming from the ontology design methodologies in the ontology engineering field, and will then research how to tailor those techniques in order to fulfill these requirements and to produce services able not only to extract individuals, concepts, relations, hierarchies, and axioms, but to ground them in good ontology practices. The work will address key research challenges in both Natural language processing and ontology engineering. It will have strong algorithmic and methodological aspects, together with implementation-oriented tasks. The activities will be conducted in the Data and Knowledge Management research unit, Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK).
Contact: ghidini@fbk.eu; rospocher@fbk.eu

Integrating logical and statistical reasoning (1)

The FBK joint research project Copilosk (http://copilosk.fbk.eu) during the last three years has investigated on the advantages of combining logical reasoning and statistical regularization for solving AI problems. The output of the project is constituted by a list of extremely promising results showing that injecting logical knowledge (available in the semantic web) into machine learning tools improves the performance in many interesting AI tasks. Along this research line, the present thesis aims to define a formal framework and a experimental prototype that integrates reasoning and learning, and supports learning in presence of background knowledge and logical reasoning when logical symbols are grounded to real data.
The framework should combine one of the standard statistical method, (e.g., graphical models, or kernel methods) with automatic reasoning techniques (e.g., SAT based or, tableaux based reasoning). The thesis is developed in the DKM research unit of FBK (dkm. fbk.eu). an international and interdisciplinary group doing research in data analysis, knowledge acquisition, representation, and reasoning.
Contact: serafini@fbk.eu

Telecommunications

Acoustic scene analysis and distant-talking speech recognition (2)

The research activities related to these two PhD grants will focus on using distant multiple microphones as input device for acoustic scene analysis and automatic speech recognition. Acoustic scene analysis aims to derive automatically information regarding the position of the speaker, to classify the nature of a sound source event, to separate simultaneously active sound sources, and to enhance the signal corresponding to the source of interest. We are interested in the extraction of a target source in real multisource noisy environments, as in situations where a speaker is interacting with a system at high distance from the microphones. Different approaches will also be investigated, in which the microphone array (or microphone network) processing can act as front-end of a speech recognizer. The research will aim to progress beyond the state-of-the-art in the given scientific areas. The ideal candidate should have:
- Master degree education in Information and Communication Technology, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Signal Processing or close topic.
- Advanced knowledge in Signal Processing, Audio and Speech Processing, or Speech Recognition.
- Possible experience in the following areas: multi-channel statistical signal processing; sparse optimization, independent component analysis.
- Good programming skills, and experience in C/C++, Perl in the Unix environment.
- Excellent knowledge of the MATLAB computing language.
- Oral and written proficiency in English.
Studies should have been completed efficiently, recently, and with an above of average mark.
Contact: omologo@fbk.eu

Electromagnetic waves propagation and interaction for safety, radioprotection and industrial applications (1)

The PhD proposal focuses on the innovative use of radio frequency signals for safety, radioprotection, rescue and other industrial applications. The research activity should be aimed to exploit novel or advanced technological applications of the classical electromagnetic wave propagation and interaction physics. The recipient should apply to one or more of the following topics:
- ad hoc networks and protocols;
- hardware development and reliability aspects;
- safety analysis and SIL;
- computational electromagnetics: use/development of FDTD numerical simulation code, and/or use of commercial or non-commercial third party FDTD/FEM simulators.
Many activities will be supported by research projects, ongoing and future, with various partner and external industries.
Contact: vaccari@fbk.eu; sdalpez@fbk.eu

Design for reliability and development of high-performance RF MEMS based lumped components and networks for reconfigurable telecommunication and wireless systems (1)

The PhD program will focus on the reliability assessment and characterization of micro switches in RF MEMS technology, being them critical basic elements for the realization of reconfigurable RF passive complex network. Furthermore, high-reliability RF-MEMS switches will be exploited, together with reactive components (i.e. capacitors and inductors), for the realization of high-performance and highly reconfigurable MEMS-based functional blocks for RF applications, like LC-tanks resonators, filters, and so on. The PhD program will encompass experimental activities, like the fabrication of RF-MEMS components and their measurement, as well as design, modeling and simulation tasks, performed with appropriate methodologies and software tools.
Contact:

Electronics

Single-photon Image Sensors in CMOS Technology (1)

The research activity will be focused onto the design, simulations and characterization of CMOS integrated imagers for biomedical applications. In particular new single-photon avalanche diode pixel structures will be developed, fabricated and tested. The ideal candidate must have a Master degree in Electronics or Telecommunication, very good knowledge of semiconductors device physics and excellent skills in analogue circuits design. Further information is available at http://soi.fbk.eu/en/home. Contact: stoppa@fbk.eu

CMOS Image Sensors for Advanced Applications (1)

The research activity will be focused onto the design, simulations and characterization of CMOS integrated imagers for biomedical and security applications. In particular, two main research topics are available: multispectral imaging covering the visible, IR and THz regions of the spectrum, and time-resolved imagers for 3D imaging. The ideal candidate must have a Master degree in Electronics or Telecommunication, good knowledge of semiconductors device physics and excellent skills in analog and digital circuits design. Further information is available at http://soi.fbk.eu/en/home. Contact: perenzoni@fbk.eu

High-performance wearable electronic and sensing components on ultra-flexible substrates (1)

The birth of microelectronics and subsequent advances over the past four decades have revolutionized computing and communications, mainly as a result of downscaling. Miniaturization remains an important direction for electronics, yet it is increasingly felt that next revolution will be brought up by integrating systems over large areas and flexible substrates - or by macroelectronics. This project will develop high-performance and wearable electronic and sensing components on ultra-flexible substrates. To this end, silicon based nano/microstructures will be investigated as viable route for high-performance flexible electronic systems over large areas. The nano/microstructure approach is promising because of the possibilities of tailoring the properties of these structures through shape, size, and atomic-composition control, which gives rise to their use in many sensing applications. In particular, development of sensors (e.g. tactile sensors) suitable for surgical instruments will be explored. Thin film transistors will be developed on flexible substrates and their utility as sensors will also be explored. Standard silicon technology will be used as much as possible and additional fabrication steps will be explored to obtain the flexible electronic systems.The candidate is expected to have background in electronic, fabrication technology and characterization of electronic devices and sensors. Multidisciplinary interest is strongly expected.
Contact: lorenzel@fbk.eu; dahiya@fbk.eu

Cognitive and Brain Sciences

The encoding of Event Knowledge in Language Resources as a support for the Diagnosis and Rehabilitation of Language Disorders

Recent studies have shown that language resources widely used for Natural Language Processing purposes (such as WordNet) can be extended and  exploited to support speech therapists in the treatment of patients affected by language disorders (see STaRS.sys and related publications). Efforts in this direction have so far concentrated on concrete nouns, also because  the treatment of anomic patients, that is patients affected by the inability to retrieve intended words during conversation or in structured language tasks such as naming pictures, are currently focused on nouns.  However a number of studies have insisted on the opportunity of including verbs, and full sentence production tasks, as an important ingredient of the treatment of anomic patients (see  Rymer and Kohen, 2006). This trend goes in parallel with a growing interest of the Human Language Technologies community for the processing of event information, that is the kind of  information typically expressed by verbs. The candidate will try to give and answer to the following research issues: What kind of event information is relevant for the treatment of  anomia? How is event information represented in existing language resources (e.g. WordNet and FrameNet)? Can this information be exploited to support speech therapists?  Is there a need for extending such information from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view? Can additional information be acquired by extraction from corpora, or through crowd-sourcing techniques? The candidate will have to interact with language disorder therapists, computational linguists, lexicographers, and possibly patients/subjects. He/she will have a strong background both in cognitive science and computational linguistics. At least some knowledge of the Italian languages is required.  All through the project, the candidate will closely collaborate with members of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMEC) of the University of Trento, where active cognitive and computational research on related areas is currently being conducted, and with computational linguists and lexicographers of the Human Language Technology group at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento. Contact: pianta@fbk.eu

FISICA

High Energy Density Hydrogen Storages (1)

The general theme regards the development of a new energy storage system for hydrogen based on Metal Hydrides integrated with a Solide Oxide Fuel Cell. The specific objective will be the study on storage tanks for high temperature metal hydrides, coupled with a proper energy management of the system in the different hydrogen adsorption and desorption cycles. An investigation on the use of thermo electric devices, specific thermal energy storage materials or other available solutions will be part of the specific grant topic. Contact: crema@fbk.eu

Development and realization of photonic-light-wave circuits for label-free biosensors (1)

Label-free biosensors, which allow detection to be done on-site and in real-time, are of increasing interest for point-of-care analysis/testing. Aim of the thesis is the optimisation of the fabrication process and the testing of a planar-light-wave circuit based on integrated whispering-gallery-mode resonators. The PhD canditate will be involved in the modelling and fabrication of the devices and will perform the functional tests of the optical circuit. Contact: pucker@fbk.eu

Development of novel analytical methodologies for surface science materials (1)

The focus of the project is to develop state of art analytical approachesf or material characterization at micro and nanometric level The PhD activity will be based on refining existing analytical protocols and implementing novel approaches, developing innovative data mining methods, and improving hardware instrumentation. The surface science field of application will be selected considering the formation and knowledge bases of the chosen candidate. In particular the topic can be determinate in a wide range of opportunities.
Examples are: Nanomaterials for detectors application /New photovoltaic  materials/Food chemistry analyses/Archeometric  studies. Contact: bersani@fbk.eu

Oxide and Carbon Nanostructures Functionalization for Energy Application  (1)

The research is essentially experimental and offers to the candidate a good knowledge acquisition in thin film synthesis and many characterization techniques, easily exploitable in solid state physics/chemistry and in process engineering for many industrial sectors.
The objective is to produce multi-functional nano-structured oxide films and carbon in duplex plasma/wet chemistry processes and to study their doping processes for a combined solar photon management and photo-catalysis. Specific catalysts will be selected  and their integration to the nano-structures will be studied. Contact: laidani@fbk.eu

Dynamical aspects of QCD and nuclear physics: from quarks and gluons to hadrons and nuclei (1)

He/she could be involved in the following in research projects with the following topics:
•         The infrared sector of QCD at zero and finite temperature.
•         Quantum reaction dynamics of weakly bound nuclei at Coulomb barrier energies.

•         Gluon saturation and high energy scattering in Quantum Chromodynamics.

Contact: richter@ectstar.eu binosi@ectstar.eu

Scienze Psicologiche e della Formazione

Scelta del consumatore informata e consapevole (1)

Il dottorando svolgerà l’attività di ricerca nell’ambito della psicologia della scelta del consumatore. Il consumo è necessario per la sopravvivenza degli individui, ma le conseguenze di tale attività possono incidere negativamente sulla salute delle persone (si pensi ai consumi anomali o compulsivi che determinano sindromi quali l’obesità o il gioco d’azzardo patologico), sul loro stato finanziario (ad esempio, il sovraindebitamento) la società e l’ambiente (ad esempio, un eccessivo consumo di risorse energetiche). Il riconoscimento del cittadino-consumatore come “consumatore vulnerabile” ha determinato, nell’ambito della disciplina giuridica della tutela del consumatore, lo sviluppo di norme di grande interesse per l’analisi psicologica della scelta di consumo. Lo scopo del progetto è quello di individuare con metodiche di psicologia sperimentale le condizioni che favoriscono l’inganno (ancorchè non intenzionale da parte dell’impresa) nella relazione diretta tra impresa e consumatore (Business-to-consumer). In particolare, la prima parte dello studio si focalizzerà sugli effetti del formato di comunicazione dell’informazione rilevante o “framing” (ad esempio, la modalità di comunicazione del prezzo o di attributi di qualità del bene/servizio). La seconda parte invece si focalizzerà sull’organizzazione del contesto in cui matura la scelta, con particolare riferimento alla sua ambientazione ed al marketing multisensoriale (es. la presenza di segnali olfattivi o visivi periferici).  Contact: nicolao.bonini@unitn.it

Economics and Management

Behavioural Economics applied to public policy and social welfare (1)

The research activity will be focused on the development of public policy interventions based on the insights of behavioural economics. Unlike mainstream economics, the behavioural approach considers economic agents as characterised by limited rationality, limited cognitive abilities, and limited willpower.  The research will take into account these limits to define policy interventions to improve people’s decisions in several domains, such as retirement savings, education, consumption,…
The research activity relies upon laboratory and field experiments, and thus the candidate should be familiar with the methodology of experimental economics. Moreover, the candidate should have capabilities to work in an interdisciplinary environment.  Contact: luigi.mittone@unitn.it

International Studies

Strategic studies and international security (1)

Description: no available Contact:  no available

Contacts

FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER/HR
Maddalena BASSETTI
FBK Via Sommarive 18, 38123 Trento Povo (TN) - Italy
Tel. +39 0461 314537 Fax. +39 0461 314670
Email: bassetti@fbk.eu