prof: alfredo ferro

PROF: ALFREDO FERRO
Personal
Date of Birth 10th of May, 1951
Scholastic Record
Feb1981 Ph.D. New York University (Computer Science)
Decision procedures for some classes of unquantified set-theoretic
formulae
Advisor Prof. J.T.Schwartz
Employment
Oct 1990 - present Professor of Computer Science
University of Catania-Italy
Nov1981 - Sept.1990 Associate Professor
University of Catania-Italy
March 1981-May 1981 Visiting Professor New York University
Nov 1975 - Oct. 1981 Assistant Professor University of Catania-Italy
(on sabbatical at NYU Sept 77-May 81)
Honors:
Jay Krakauer Award for the best Ph.D. Dissertation in the School of
Sciences at NYU in the academic year 1980-1981.
Other :
Has been Director of Graduate Studies in Computer Science at the
University of Catania from 1996 to 2002. Presently is part of the
Department of Clinical and Molecular Biomedicine and he is Director of
Graduate Studies in "Clinical,Experimental and Computational Pathology
and Hematology".
Director (since 1989) of the International School for Computer Science
Researchers(Lipari School)one of the most prestigious summer schools
in computer Science. (http://lipari.cs.unict.it/LipariSchool/CS/index.php)
Is Co-Director with R. Giancarlo and C.Guerra of Lipari International
Summer School on BioInformatics and Computational Biology
(http://lipari.cs.unict.it/LipariSchool/Bio/index.php)
He is the director of the three years international project (GRANT
INT01AB7BE of MIUR) of collaboration among Catania University, New
York University and Columbia University. Some of the tools developped
within
such
collaboration
can
be
found
at
http://alpha.dmi.unict.it/~ctnyu.
Research:
His research area includes Database and Automated Reasoning with
particular emphasis on Probabilistic Databases, Clustering, DataMining,
Algorithms,Aproximate Queries with applications in Bioinformatics and
Networking.
Is co-author(with Cantone and Omodeo)of the book "Computable Set
Theory" , Oxford University Press.
He has been visiting researcher in several prestigious universities such
as New York University, Stanford University and the University of
Maryland -College Park.
He has directed several national and european research projects in the
field of Automated Reasoning, Databases with Uncertainty and
Bioinformatics.
**********************SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
1) MONGIOVÌ M, DI NATALE R, GIUGNO R, PULVIRENTI A, FERRO A,
SHARAN R (2010). A set-cover-based approach for inexact graph
matching. JOURNAL OF BIOINFORMATICS AND COMPUTATIONAL
BIOLOGY, vol. 8, p. 199-218, ISSN: 0219-7200MICSB2009,
Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference on
Computational Systems Bioinformatics. Stanford, USA, August 1012, 2009(BEST PAPER AWARD)
2) PAVONE P, PETTOELLO-MANTOVANO M, LE PIRA A, GIARDINO I,
PULVIRENTI A, GIUGNO R, PARANO E, FERRO A, PAVONE L,
RUGGERI M (2010). Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis. A longterm prospective study of 17 pediatric patients with systematic
review of 724 cases (and meta-analysis of 466/724 cases) in the
literature. NEUROPEDIATRICS, ISSN: 0174-304XR
3) LAGANÀ A, FORTE S, RUSSO F, GIUGNO R, PULVIRENTI A, FERRO
A (2010). Prediction of human targets for viral-encoded microRNAs
by thermodynamics and empirical constraints. JOURNAL OF RNAI
AND GENE SILENCING, vol. 6(1), p. 379-385, ISSN: 1747-0854
4) iDI NATALE R, FERRO A, GIUGNO R, MONGIOVI' M, PULVIRENTI A,
SHASHA D (2010). SING: Subgraph search In Non-homogeneous
Graphs. BMC BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 11:96, p. *, ISSN: 14712105, doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-11-96 5) LAGANÀ A, RUSSO F, SISMEIRO C, GIUGNO R, PULVIRENTI A,
FERRO A (2010). Variability in the Incidence of miRNAs and Genes
in Fragile Sites and the Role of Repeats and CpG Islands in the
Distribution of Genetic Material. PLOS ONE, vol. 5(6), p. *, ISSN:
1932-6203, doi: 10.1371 6) V. SVICHER, C. ALTERI, R. DARRIGO, A. LAGANÀ, M. TRIGNETTI,
S. LO CAPUTO, A. P. CALLEGARO, F. MAGGIOLO, F. MAZZOTTA,
FERRO A, S. DIMONTE, S. AQUARO, G. DI PERRI, S. BONORA, C.
TOMMASI, M. P. TROTTA, P. NARCISO, A. ANTINORI, PERNO C. F,
CECCHERINI-SILBERSTEIN F (2009). The Treatment with the
Fusion Inhibitor Enfuvirtide Influences the Appearance of Mutations
in the HIV-1 Regulatory Protein Rev. ANTIMICROBIAL AGENTS AND
CHEMOTHERAPY, vol. 53(7), p. 23-2816, ISSN: 0066-4804 7) A. LAGANÀ, S. FORTE, A. GIUDICE, M. R. ARENA, P. L. PUGLISI, R.
GIUGNO, A. PULVIRENTI, D. SHASHA, FERRO A (2009). miRò: a
miRNA knowledge base. DATABASE, vol. Vol. 2009, bap008, p. *,
ISSN: 1758-0463, doi: 10.1093/database/bap008 8) FERRO A, GIUGNO R, MONGIOVI' M, PULVIRENTI A, SKRIPIN D,
SHASHA D (2008). GraphFind: Enhancing Graph Searching by Low
Support Data Mining Techniques. BMC BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 9, p.
*-°, ISSN: 1471-2105, doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-9-S4-S10 9) DI PIETRO C, RAGUSA M, BARBAGALLO D, DURO LR,
GUGLIELMINO MR, MAJORANA A, GIUNTA V, RAPISARDA A,
TRICARICHI E, MICELI M, ANGELICA R, GRILLO A, BANELLI B,
DEFFERARI I, FORTE S, LAGANÀ A, BOSCO C, GIUGNO R,
PULVIRENTI A, FERRO A, GRZESCHIK KH, DI CATALDO A, TONINI
GP, ROMANI M, PURRELLO M (2008). Involvement of GTA protein
NC2β in Neuroblastoma pathogenesis suggests that it
physiologically participates in the regulation of cell proliferation.
MOLECULAR CANCER, vol. 7, p. *, ISSN: 1476-4598, doi:
10.1186/1476-4598-7-59 10)C. DI PIETRO, M. RAGUSA, L. DURO, M.R. GUGLIELMINO, D.
BARBAGALLO, A. CARNEMOLLA, A. LAGANA, P. BUFFA, R.
ANGELICA, A. RINALDI, M. S, CALAFATO, I. MILICIA, C. CASERTA,
R. GIUGNO, PULVIRENTI A, V. GIUNTA, A. RAPISARDA, V. DI
PIETRO, A. GRILLO, A. MESSINA, FERRO A, K.H. GRZESCHIK, M.
PURRELLO (2007). GENOMICS, EVOLUTION, AND EXPRESSION OF
TBPL2, A MEMBER OF THE TBP FAMILY. DNA AND CELL BIOLOGY.
DNA AND CELL BIOLOGY, vol. VOL. 26, p. 369-385, ISSN: 10445498 11)FERRO A, GIUGNO R, PIGOLA G, PULVIRENTI A, SKRIPIN D, BADER
G. D, SHASHA D (2007). NetMatch: a Cytoscape Plugin for
Searching Biological Networks. BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 23(7), p.
910-912, ISSN: 1367-4803, doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btm032 12)FERRO A, GIUGNO R, PIGOLA G, PULVIRENTI A, DI PIETRO C,
PURRELLO M, RAGUSA M (2007). Sequence similarity is more
relevant than species specificity in probabilistic backtranslation.
BMC BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 8:58, p. *, ISSN: 1471-2105, doi:
10.1186/1471-2105-8-58 13)C. DI PIETRO, S. PIRO, G. TABBI, M. RAGUSA, V. DI PIETRO, V.
ZIMMITTI, M. ANELLO, U. CONSOLI, E. T.SALINARO, M. CARUSO,
C. VANCHERI, N. CRIMI, M. G. SABINI, G. A. P. CIRRONE, L.
RAFFAELE, G. PRIVITERA, A. PULVIRENTI, R. GIUGNO, FERRO A, G.
CUTTONE, S. LO NIGRO, R. PURRELLO, F. PURRELLO, AND M.
PURRELLO (2006). Cellular and molecular effects of protons:
Apoptosis induction and potential implications for cancer therapy.
APOPTOSIS, vol. 11, p. 57-66, ISSN: 1360-8185 14)PURRELLO M, DI PIETRO D, RAGUSA M, PULVIRENTI A, GIUGNO R,
DI PIETRO V, EMMANUELE G, TRAVALI S, SCALIA M, SHASHA D,
FERRO A (2005). In Vitro and In Silico Cloning of Xenopus Laevis
SOD2 cDNA and Its Phylogenetic Analysis. DNA AND CELL
BIOLOGY, vol. 24, p. 111-116, ISSN: 1044-5498