Jan. 2022 – Jan 2025 Senior Research Associate at Northwestern University, Evanston IL
Lead System Integrator, DARPA SHADE program. Led the development of an AI-powered negotiation agent for the game of Diplomacy. Leveraged ML and game theory models to detect threats, predict alliances, and uncover deceptive patterns, enabling the AI agent to autonomously determine the most advantageous moves and maximize its chances of victory against competing agents.
Coordinator & Developer, Terror Early Warning System (NTEWS). Developed a Web Platform that combines data collection with automatic generation of probabilistic forecasts of terrorist activities. Led the integration of human-assisted large language models (LLMs) to produce comprehensive threat reports in natural language, bridging the gap between raw data and actionable security decisions (sign up here to receive monthly reports).
Developer, Global Online Deep Fake Detection System (GODDS). Developed an optimized AI-driven deepfake detection framework that integrates human oversight with automated analysis, enhancing digital media authenticity verification. Since its launch in July 2024, GODDS has been used by 50+ journalists, including CNN, the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, AFP, and others.
Oct. 2019 – Dec. 2021 Head of AI Technologies at Algorithmic Objective Corp, San Diego CA
Led research and development of VehicleDRX, an advanced deep learning framework for real-time vehicle detection, behavioral pattern recognition, and threat assessment in live video streams.
Directed Agile/Scrum-based AI solution development, mentoring a team of 10+ engineers.
Collaborated with cross-functional teams—including users, management, and vendors—to define computing needs and system design specifications.
Sep. 2017 – Sep. 2019 Post Doctoral Researcher at Dept. of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Co-authors of several papers on the broad field of counter-terrorism and a book on Boko Haram.
Implemented three web applications (two using Java EE, one Php) that allow analysts to browse data on the terrorist groups, and see the forecasts and the most important predictive features.
Sep. 2016 – Aug. 2017 Post Doctoral Researcher at UMIACS, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Developed a framework in Python that provides justifications for predictions made by any classifier and in different settings in plain English.
Apr. 2015 – Aug. 2016 Post Doctoral Researcher at DIMES, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy
Developed a brand protection system that suggests limiting actions to counteract the effect of misinformation when a “bad” campaign starts propagating in a social network.
Implemented algorithms in C++ that identify a set of users in a social network who can effectively block misinformation and simultaneously expand the spread of good information.
Jun. 2014 – Dec. 2021 Co-founder and CFO of Coremuniti SRL, Rende, Italy
Startup devoted to solving computing-intensive problems.
Developed a specialized plugin for Blender 3D that allows people working in the rendering 3D industry to gather the computational resources needed to complete their rendering by leveraging our peer-to-peer network. Website: www.coremuniti.com
Investigated and validated company propositions, target markets, competition, and operational and revenue strategies.
