Lectures of Embedded Systems will start on FRIDAY 25th SEPTEMBER
MARTEDI ore 16.30 nel mio ufficio (Stanza 156 - Viale Morgagni 65). Si raccomanda di inviare una mail per segnalare l'intenzione di partecipare al ricevimento.
TUESDAY 16.30 in my office (Room 156 - Viale Morgagni 65). It is strongly recommended to send an email to announce the intention to participate.
- Laurea Triennale conseguita nell'Aprile 2006 presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze
- Laurea Magistrale conseguita nell'Ottobre 2008 presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze
- Dottorato in “Ingegneria Informatica e dell’Automazione” conseguito nell'Aprile 2012 presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze
- Dal 2012 a Novembre 2021: Ricercatore a Tempo Determinato presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze
- Dal 1 Dicembre 2021: Professore Associato presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze
Vedere la parte inglese, Curriculum
See english version for my updated curriculum
Keywords: Cyber-security, intrusion detection, attack scenario reconstruction, safety, embedded systems, ICT.
I miei principali interessi di ricerca sono nel campo della progettazione e validazione di sistemi sicuri e affidabili. Alcuni degli argomenti che ho affrontato di recente, o su cui mi sto concentrando in questo periodo, sono:
1- Progettazione e valutazione di soluzioni di intrusion detection (rilevazione delle intrusioni), e di ricostruzione degli scenari di attacco.
2- Analisi di sicurezza di applicazioni basate su machine learning e intelligenza artificiale, con particolare attenzione al contesto di autonomous driving, e con il supporto di simulatori di guida autonoma.
3 - Progettazione e validazione sperimentale (testing) di sistemi embedded, mediante l'applicazione di processi e pratiche secondo gli standard richiesti, con particolare attenzione al dominio ferroviario e automotive.
INFORMAZIONI PER TESI E TIROCINI: vedere la parte Inglese "Note".
Website del Resilient Computing Lab: https://rcl.unifi.it/
dove puoi trovare ulteriori informazioni sulle nostre attività, progetti e proposte di tesi.
Legenda
- Bachelor Degree in Computer Science: April 2006, Università degli Studi di Firenze
- Master Degree in Computer Science: October 2008, Università degli Studi di Firenze
- PhD in "Informatics and Automation Engineering”: April 2012, Università degli Studi di Firenze
- 2012 - 2021 Research Associate, Università degli Studi di Firenze
- 2021 -- onwards: Associate Professor, Università degli Studi di Firenze
last update: August 2026
Andrea Ceccarelli is Associate Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Florence (Italy), where he also received the Bachelor and Master degrees (both cum laude), and the PhD in Informatics and Automation Engineering in 2012.
He is currently an Associate Professor of computer science at the University of Florence. His research interests include the design, monitoring, and evaluation of dependable and secure systems, with over 15 years of experience and with a preference for experimental approaches. In the recent period, he focused on approaches to detect attacks, reconstruct attack scenarios, and reduce system security risks, with a preference for techniques based on the analysis of the system when subject to anomalous inputs.
His research has resulted in more than 140 peer-reviewed publications. He is regularly involved in the TPC of International Conferences in the domain of dependability, security, and reliability engineering, and he has been the TPC Co-Chair of SAFECOMP, LADC and SRDS. He has been involved in multiple research projects and he has been recently leading his unit in the MUR projects BREADCRUMBS and FLEGREA, and the Tuscany projects SPACE, and WAU. He is member of the IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerance and Associate Editor of IEEE TDSC.
Relevant web pages:
Research Group : https://rcl.unifi.it/
Full list of publications from the institutional repository: https://flore.unifi.it/cris/rp/rp01089
Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=18041935700
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HDQTGSsAAAAJ&hl=it&oi=ao
Current Position
2021 present. Associate Professor in Computer Science, Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Florence, Italy.
Past Positions
2012--2021. Researcher (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in Computer Science, University of Florence, Italy
Education
Bachelor s Degree in Computer Science, 110/110 with honors, April 2006, University of Florence
Master s Degree in Computer Science, 110/110 with honors, October 2008, University of Florence
PhD in "Informatics and Automation Engineering: April 2012, University of Florence
Teaching and didactic responsibilities
Since November 2024, I am serving as Chair of the Bachelor s Degree programme in Computer Science at the University of Florence, https://www.informatica.unifi.it/ .
Teachings at the University of Florence
Academic Year 2026/2027:
Courses taught in previous years (non-exhaustive list) at BsC or MsC:
Teachings at foreign institutions:
PhD Course Architecting Cyber-Physical Systems of Systems (60 hours) at Budapest University of Technology and Economics -Budapesti Műszaki s Gazdas gtudom nyi Egyetem (Hungary), 2023.
"Design e Arquitetura de sistemas de sistemas" (60 hours), MSc in Computer Science of Universitade Federal de Alagoas (Maceio, Brasil), 2023.
Academic Services
Andrea Ceccarelli was General and Program co-Chair of SafeComp 2024, co-chair of IWES 2023 (Italian Workshop on Embedded Systems), and he was TPC co-Chair of the conferences SRDS 2017 (International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems), and LADC 2018 (Latin-America Symposium on Dependable Computing).
He held the roles of
He is currently appointed as Artifact Evaluation co-Chair for the upcoming DSN 2027.
He organized the 88th IFIP WG 10.4 Meeting Cybersecurity of Transportation Systems, 2025, together with Marcus Volp and Wilfried Steiner, and the IFIP WG10.4 Fall Virtual Workshop , Workshop Theme: AI, liability and privacy in autonomous driving: What challenges for the legal sector?, 8 November 2024.
He co-organized different workshops at conferences:
He organized summer schools in 2021 (virtual), 2022, 2023, 2024 on "ARTISAN - Role and effects of ARTificial Intelligence in SecureApplicatioNs" together with O. Aktouf (Grenoble INP, France) and O. Jung (AIT, Austria).
He is regularly involved in the Program Committee of Conferences and Workshops: overall, he has been member of over 150 TPCs of conferences and workshops, including venues as IEEE/IFIP DSN, IEEE SRDS, IEEE ISSRE, SAFECOMP, AAAI, IEEE NCA.
Amongst main speaking activities, he was invited speaker at:
and panelist at:
Amongst editorial activities, starting 2026 he is Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
Main research projects
Andrea Ceccarelli participated in several research projects, with different roles and responsibilities. Main responsibilities are reported below.
Technical coordinator of the unit in:
Work Package Leader in:
Technology transfer
From 2009 until 2025, Andrea Ceccarelli was a partner of the company Resiltech SRL, which has been Academic Spinoff of the University of Florence. Resiltech operates in the area of design, Verification, Validation and assessment of critical systems, with main focus in the automotive, railway and industrial automation domain.
He regularly serves as expert for the evaluation of project proposals for the European Commission (2014, 2016--2026), and for the evaluation of project proposals for the Eureka/Eurostars network (2019 -- 2026). He occasionally served as also for the review of proposals of national and regional projects, and also served as reviewer for the Slovackian research council.
He is co-Inventor of the Italian Patent: Brevetto italiano 102015000072477, Methods and apparatus for resilient time signalling (N.PCT/IB2016/056768).
He taught courses to companies, on topics related to safety-critical, dependable and secure systems, for ANIE ASSIFER, ARUBA, RFI.
PhD Schools and PhD Students
2026-present. Member of the Academic Board, PhD Programme in Computer Science, University of Pisa. Joint doctoral programme involving the Universities of Pisa, Florence, and Siena.
2022-2026 Member of the Academic Board, PhD Programme in Mathematics, Informatics, and Statistics, University of Florence.
Supervisor of Dr. Tommaso Puccetti (PhD concluded in 2026), supervisor of Lucas Leal (co-tutela with the University of Campinas), cosupervisor of Tommaso Zoppi, Enrico Schiavone, Fahad Kokhar at the University of Florence.
Appointed as:
Service to Master s Students:
Visiting Positions
Andrea Ceccarelli has been visiting researcher:
Main National and International Acknowledgements
2019- Best Experience Report paper at LADC 2019
2020- Best Research Paper Nominees at ISSRE 2020
2021- Member of the IFIP WG10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance.The WG 10.4 brings together a small, select proportion of experts in the field of fault-tolerant systems. Membership is by co-option and requires approval by a majority vote of the existing members.
2024- National Scientific Habilitation for Full Professor Position in Computer Science and in Computer Engineering
Keywords: Cybersecurity, intrusion detection, attack scenario reconstruction, safety, embedded systems, ICT.
My main research interests concern the design and validation of safe, secure, and dependable systems. Some of the topics I have recently investigated, or on which I am currently focusing, include:
Website of the Resilient Computing Lab: https://rcl.unifi.it
INFORMATION FOR THESES
If you are interested in my research subjects, and willing to work hard, you are very welcome to contact me for a Thesis topic. I will do my best to assign you an interesting topic and attentively follow you during its development.
But first, you are encouraged to read the information below.
BACHELOR THESIS
You are encouraged to mail me for an appointment, during which I will propose topics (typically, 1-2) to be developed as Bachelor Thesis. Then you may take some time, to check if any of the proposed topics matches your interests.
If you are interested in an internship in a company, feel free to drop me an email as well, I can try to help arranging one.
MASTER THESIS
A successful Master Thesis requires a relevant body of work, and a considerable amount of time (usually, it is around 6 months of work). So it is important that the subject of the Thesis is carefully selected to match your interests and ambitions.
You are welcome to contact me, then we will schedule an appointment and I will provide you background material that you can use to decide on the assigned subject.
To reduce the risk of unpleasant experiences, please take under consideration the following:
- it is requested that the candidate is available for periodical physical meetings (some remote meetings are acceptable, but can't be the only option).
- if the candidate uses ChatGPT or similar text generation tools to write the dissertation, it is requested to indicate which parts of the dissertation have been generated.
PROSPECTIVE PHD STUDENTS
As this requires a 3-year research plan, your involvement must be discussed with proper care. It is important that we reason attentively to identify the research subjects that are of interests for you. You are encouraged to contact me for information and to draft a prospective research plan.
Please consider that PhD in Italian Universities starts on 1 November each year, and the deadline for applications are typically between May and July.
TOPICS
You can find some Thesis proposals on the website of the Resilient Computing Lab: https://rcl.unifi.it , section "Thesis Proposals". Some of them are also reported below. As the list may not be updated too frequently, it is better to mail me for an appointment, so that I can present you the latest availabilities.
Detection of Advanced Persistent Threats. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) consist of multiple attack steps and persistently target systems over extended periods. Developing approaches and solutions for Intrusion Detection (ID) is crucial to mitigate the impact of security breaches. Our research aims to leverage machine learning to advance in this direction.
Safety of machine learning solutions. Machine learning is undeniably an enabling technology in several domains, for example it is at the foundation of autonomous driving. However, unproper (unsafe) behaviour of solutions based on machine learning may lead to dangerous consequences. Many Theses initiatives can be identified in this direction, especially using the autonomous driving as a reference domain, and that may span from the definition of mitigation strategies of possible unsafe behaviours to the comparison of solutions or to their representation and assessment through simulators.
