News & research updates

Recent publications, collaborations, events and milestones, followed by the migrated archive from the former website.

October 2026 · Interactive resource

M.O.D.A.L. launches Atlante PRIN 2026

A new interactive geographic atlas to explore Italy’s PRIN 2026 research projects, including the standard, Hybrid and Synergy programmes. Developed by M.O.D.A.L. and hosted at Federico II.

Explore the PRIN 2026 Atlas ↗
Upcoming · 19 October 2026 · 10:00–11:00

Invited talk by Prof. Zenglin Xu at M.O.D.A.L.

Professor Zenglin Xu (Fudan University) will speak on Trustworthy Federated Learning: Toolboxes, Benchmarks, and Models at the Department of Mathematics and Applications, Federico II.

Seminar details and poster →
15 September 2026 · New funded project

SCULPT begins: towards generative and agent-based Digital Twins

Led by Prof. Francesco Piccialli, SCULPT launches a two-year research programme within the Federico II STAR Junior PI Grants, exploring modular Digital Twins, Generative AI and Multi-Agent Systems.

Explore the SCULPT project →
2026 · Applied Energy

SAGE: sustainable Federated Learning for IoT

Published in Applied Energy, SAGE introduces energy-aware client selection that jointly considers remaining battery, data divergence and the use of renewable energy.

Read the paper ↗
2026 · IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Towards Trustworthy IIoT: federated unlearning meets multi-agent RL

The FU-MARL research framework brings federated unlearning together with multi-agent reinforcement learning for trustworthy Industrial IoT systems.

Read the paper ↗
2026 · Springer book chapters

AI & Federated Learning for Drug Discovery

Two complementary contributions address privacy-preserving collaborative learning in drug discovery and practical, reproducible AI modelling protocols.

Federated Learning chapter ↗
AI modelling chapter ↗
October 2026 · Collaboration

University of Tokyo visit to M.O.D.A.L.

M.O.D.A.L. welcomed Prof. Hangli G. from The University of Tokyo for an exchange on Artificial Intelligence, data, cities and future research directions.

LinkedIn update ↗
September 2026 · Conference

ECML PKDD 2026 in Naples

M.O.D.A.L. contributed with FLIP4Tab in the Main Research Track and with the AGENSYS workshop on agentic systems and distributed intelligence.

Event details →
2026 · IEEE TNNLS

FuGuard: client-level Federated Unlearning

A new trustworthy-AI contribution combining generative surrogates and optimal transport to remove a client's contribution without restarting federated training from scratch.

Paper ↗
2026 · Computer Networks

SWIFT: one-shot federated traffic prediction

Cross-city traffic prediction is reformulated around sharing transferable temporal knowledge while retaining city-specific spatial structure locally.

Paper ↗
2026 · Scientific Reports

DeepFoc for Campi Flegrei

Deep learning and geophysics are combined to estimate earthquake focal mechanisms in the Campi Flegrei caldera under noisy and incomplete-data conditions.

Paper ↗
2026 · IEEE TCE

DIVAS-FL: Generative Voice AI with Federated Learning

Diffusion-based voice editing and federated fine-tuning enable privacy-aware personalization while keeping raw speech data local.

Paper ↗
2026 · People

Fabio Giampaolo begins his RTT in Computer Science

The milestone marks a new stage in Fabio Giampaolo's academic career and in the continuing growth of the M.O.D.A.L. research group.

People →
2026 · Research results

Two new directions: Federated Prompt Learning and PINN loss design

The group announced acceptance of a federated prompt-learning paper in the IEEE ICDM 2026 Main Research Track alongside a comprehensive review of loss-function design for Physics-Informed Neural Networks.

Publications →
Archive

Earlier news

2023

Blockchain-based Secure Internet of Medical Things Framework for Stress Detection

DON-B-STRESSED and secure IoMT research published in Information Sciences.

2023

Highly Cited Paper in 2022

The Industry 4.0 Explainable AI survey recognized as a Web of Science Highly Cited Paper.

2023

Welcome to a new member of MODAL!

Marzia Canzaniello joined the M.O.D.A.L. research group.

2023

e-Health bookings and Knowledge Graphs

Research on structuring e-health booking data through Knowledge Graphs.

2022

DL-PO funded project by DPI

Dutch Polymer Institute project on deep-learning-aided GPC-IR fingerprinting of polyolefin mixtures.

2022

Best Paper Award @ ICDM2022-UDML

“Cut the Peaches” received the Best Paper Award at UDML@ICDM 2022.

2022

Machine Learning in Seismicity

A data-driven neural model for ground-motion prediction from induced seismicity.

2022

Scientific Machine Learning through PINNs

Publication of the survey “Where we are and What’s Next” in the Journal of Scientific Computing.

2022

Welcome to new MODAL members

Daniela Annunziata and Martina Savoia joined the laboratory.

2021

Highly Cited Paper in 2021

The survey on deep learning in medicine was recognized as a Web of Science Highly Cited Paper.

2021

The BIOCHIP project

First research results of the BIOCHIP project published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

2021

AI and Smart Mobility

Predictive analytics for smart parking using Deep Learning and IoT data.

2021

AI and Healthcare

Forecasting medical bookings through multi-source time-series fusion.

2022

ELIXIR x NextGenerationIT: a new funded project

PNRR support for strengthening Italian infrastructure for omics data and bioinformatics.

2022

Welcome to a new Visiting Researcher at MODAL

Rokas Gipsikis joined the group as a visiting Ph.D. researcher with a focus on Explainable AI.

2022

Welcome to new MODAL members

MariaPia De Rosa and Stefano Izzo joined the laboratory as Ph.D. students.

2021

Predictive Medicine and Deep Learning

Research on automatic segmentation and classification of salivary-gland tumours with Deep Learning.

2021

Welcome to a new Visiting Researcher at MODAL

Victor Rodriguez joined the research community as a visiting researcher.

2021

AI and COVID-19

Publication on the role of Artificial Intelligence in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021

Industrial Ph.D. – PreDICTS

Industrial Ph.D. project “Predictive Data Intelligence for Cities’ Territory and Sustainability”.

2021

Welcome to a new MODAL member

Edoardo Prezioso joined the laboratory as a Ph.D. student.