Alberto Del Bimbo

Born on February 15th, 1952, Firenze, Italy.
Resident in Via della Martellina 22, Bagno a Ripoli, Firenze, Italy

Professor of Computer Engineering at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Firenze, Via Santa Marta 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy.
Tel: +39 055 2758644 Fax: +39 055 2751396 Cell: +39 339 2000104 Email: alberto.delbimbo@unifi.it

Director of MICC Media Integration and Communication Center, University of Firenze, Viale G.B. Morgagni 65, Firenze, Italy.

SUMMARY OF RESEARCH CAREER, SERVICES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Prof. Del Bimbo is a distinguished scientist in Computer Engineering, doing research and research transfer on Computer Vision and Multimedia technologies and their applications to industry and society. He received his Master Degree in Electronic Engineering from University of Firenze, in 1977. He was with IBM Italy from 1978 to 1988. In 1988 he joined University of Firenze as Associate Professor of Computer Engineering. In 1994 he was promoted to Full Professor and moved to the Department of Computer Engineering, University of Brescia. From 1995 he went back to University of Firenze in the Department of Systems and Computer Science. Since 2013, he is Full Professor at the Department of Information Engineering where he is currently teaching courses on Multimedia Design and Development and Visual and Multimedia Recognition.

Services at the University

At the University of Firenze he has served in key management roles, namely:

• Director of NEMECH–New Media for Cultural Heritage Competence Center of the Tuscany

  Region and the University of Firenze for implementation and dissemination of advanced ICT

  solutions in museums and cultural heritage sites (from 2013 to present)

• Director of MICC–Media Integration and Communication Center, a research and technology

  transfer body established by the Italian Ministry of Research as a National Center of Excellence at the University of Firenze working on Image and Video Analysis, Multimedia Technologies and its Applications (from 2008 to present)

• Director of Master in Multimedia Content Design, a national top quality post-graduate school on Multimedia technology (from 1998 to 2015)

• President of Foundation for Research and Innovation a public body between University of Firenze, Provincial Governments of Firenze, Prato and Pistoia and Chambers of Commerce of Firenze, Prato and Pistoia for research transfer between University and Industry (from 2007 to 2010)

• Pro-Rettore (Deputy-Rector) of University of Firenze for Research and Innovation Transfer in charge of research development and implementation of research transfer facilities at the University of Firenze (from 2000 to 2006)

• Director of Department of Systems and Computer Science (from 1997 to 2000)

• Member of Academic Senate at Large (from 1998 to 1999).

Services in scientific and cultural institutions

Prof. Del Bimbo has also served scientific and cultural institutions at the national and international level:

• Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of B-COM, a French public-private body led by Orange, France Te?le?com, TdF, INRIA, Institut Telecom and Supe?lec, to establish a world-

  class player in multimedia, networks and medical applications, France (from 2013 to present)

• Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of COMMIT/, the Dutch national public- private ICT-research and technology program to do ICT-science at world level while having a

  high-tech impact in the industry and society, The Netherlands (from 2011 to 2017)

• Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage program (CATCH), of the NWO the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research

  Development, The Netherlands (from 2005 to 2015)

• Member of the Council of the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, Italy (from 2006 to 2015)

• Member of the Review Committee for Computer Science for the Association of Netherlands

  Universities, The Netherlands (2005, 2008, 2010)

• Member of the International Scientific Board Quality Assurance of Netherlands Universities

  (QUANU), The Netherlands (from 2005 to 2007)

• Member of the Scientific Committee for the Strategic Plan of Firenze, Italy (from 2001 to 2005)

• Member of the Joint Working Group on Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical

  Materials, EC-US NSF (from 2003 to 2005)

• President of the Scientific Committee of CESVIT, the Agency for Development of

  Advanced Technology in Tuscany Region, Italy (from 1990 to 1993)

  He was also Auditor for research projects for Toscana, Umbria, Lazio and Sardegna Regional Governments, the Trento Provincial Government, Italy, Ministry of Productive Activities and Ministry of University and Research in Italy, and European Commission.

  Services in international research associations

  Prof. Del Bimbo has also served in the most important international research associations in Computer Science and Engineering such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) in various roles:

• Founding Member of the ACM EuroMM, European Chapter of ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia (from 2010 to present).

• Member of the Steering Committee of ACM MM, Int’l Conf. on Multimedia (from 2011 to 2015).

• Member of the Steering Committee of ACM ICMR, Int’l Conf. on Multimedia Retrieval (from 2011

  to 2015).

• Member of the Steering Committee of IEEE ICME, Int’l Conf. on Multimedia and Expo (from 2000 to 2005).

• Member at Large of IEEE Publication Board (from 1999 to 2001).

• Member of the Steering Committee of IEEE ICMCS, Int’l Conf. on Multimedia Computing and

  Systems (from 1998 to 2000).

• Member of the IAPR Governing Board (from 1994 to 2000).

• President of the IAPR GIRPR, IAPR Italian chapter (from 1996 to 2000).

• Vice-President of the IAPR GIRPR, IAPR Italian chapter (from 1994 to 1996).

Research activity

Prof. Del Bimbo leads a research team at MICC, Media Integration and Communication Center of University of Firenze, investigating cutting-edge solutions in the fields of multimedia, multimodal interactivity and computer vision. The main applications fields in his research include digital libraries and cultural heritage, user enhanced and personalized interactivity, smart environments, surveillance and monitoring, and industry automation.

In the field of Multimedia, Prof. Del Bimbo was one of the very first researchers to start research in image and video content-based retrieval in the late 80’s. He is the author of the monography, Visual Information Retrieval, edited by Morgan Khaufman in 1999, which became one of the most cited books in the early times of image and video content-based retrieval (over 1000 citations). In 2010, the team leaded by Prof. Del Bimbo contributed to the EC VidiVideo project, led by the University of Amsterdam, where a system was developed that was capable of performing automatic recognition of 1000 concepts. Recently in 2016, he coauthored a comprehensive survey on automatic annotation and retrieval of Social Media, which appeared on ACM Computing Surveys, the most prestigeous journal in computer Science.

In the field of Computer Vision, Prof. Del Bimbo has worked actively over 20 years in tracking and surveillance applications and more in general in industrial applications with important collaborations with national and international companies, such as Leonardo Finmeccanica, Panasonic Singapore, Thales Italia and the US IARPA agency, just to cite the most recent and ongoing collaborations.

Recognitions

Prof. Del Bimbo is an internationally recognized scientist. In 2016, he was the recipient of the prestigeous Award for “Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications”, issued by the Special Interest Group on Multimedia of the International Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGMM). Again in 2016, he was awarded as ACM Distinguished Scientist, “in recognition of significant accomplishments in and impact on the computing field”. He is:

• IAPR Fellow, (since 2000).

• IEEE Senior Member (Since 2014)

• ACM Distinguished Scientist (Since 2016).