An engineer turning into a neuroscientist.
Biomedical engineer by training, neuroscientist by direction. On the way I kept the whole toolbox: hardware and prototyping, some electronics, data science, and the people side, teams, events, speaking in public. That mix is what lets me work across a bench, a dataset and a room full of people.
Synthetic signal, drawn by this page. Not recorded data.
Biomedical engineer from Catania, now a PhD researcher in Vitznau. I study how the hand recovers after a stroke, with TMS, wearable sensors and models of longitudinal clinical data. Before that: a myoelectric hand, an ECG rebuilt from video, a robot that danced. I organise people as happily as I organise data.
PhD researcher · Neurorehabilitation
University of Zürich · Lake Lucerne Institute
Context-Dependent Effects of Grip Force on the Strength–Dexterity Trade-Off in Dexterous Force Control
Hover or focus an element to see where it was used; pick a family to light it up.
From a dancing robot in high school to a myoelectric hand and a thesis at ETH. Open a panel.
Self Orienting Neck Natural Yarn
Self Orienting Neck Natural Yarn, built at ITI Archimede with Arduino and Raspberry Pi: a robot able to dance, talk and see. It won RomeCup 2017 and the Italian Robotics Olympics the same year. Earlier, a team he was part of won RomeCup 2015.
Read more in the PortfolioWon1st · RomeCup 2017
Ex Machina Ad Hominem · 3D-printed myoelectric prosthesis
Co-founded and led by a student team of 10–15 from four departments at Politecnico di Torino, under Prof. Marco Knaflitz. He was the youngest founder. The prosthesis uses an STM Nucleo microcontroller, a 16-bit ADC, double-differential silver electrodes, three servomotors, firmware, a GUI and machine learning. Tested on healthy subjects, without force feedback. In his words: failures, satisfactions, a lot learnt.
Read more in the PortfolioFunding€18k secured
Automated segmentation from CT slices
Two U-Net models (ResNet-64) segment the carotid artery from stacked CT slices in DICOM format. The 50 volumes were split 35 for training, 5 for validation and 10 for testing. Post-processing was checked against manual masks, and the internal and external carotid are segmented separately.
Read more in the PortfolioVolumes50 CT volumes
Landmarks, a neural network and speech synthesis
MediaPipe landmarks feed a neural network trained on a purpose-built dataset of 1500 five-second videos, recorded across users and conditions. The pipeline runs from video to landmarks to recognised signs, with a GUI that adds speech synthesis. The system reaches 86% accuracy with a latency of a few seconds.
Read more in the PortfolioAccuracy86% accuracy
IoT garden and pool management
IoT garden and pool management, built with D. Merlin, A. Ravera and A. Navone. Raspberry Pi and Arduino hardware, a microservices server, a catalogue manager on JSON, a Telegram bot and a Node-RED web app. Communication runs on MQTT and REST, and automatic irrigation decisions aim to save water.
Read more in the PortfolioStackMQTT + REST
A dataset for an Expected Goals (xG) algorithm
A football dataset built for an Expected Goals (xG) algorithm. The pipeline scrapes data from the web in R, merges it in Python and MATLAB, then adds feature engineering and shot-density plots. Football is something he watches, plays and now analyses with data.
Read more in the PortfolioStackR · Python · MATLAB
Prototypes built fast, with teams from several cities
Hackahealth, across all of its Geneva and Zurich editions, produced prototypes for people with disabilities. The list continues with Oxford Hack, the Turin Google Developer Hack and others, a steady run of hackathons across Europe. Across several countries, it shows how often he built prototypes in a short time.
Read more in the PortfolioEditionsGeneva · Zurich · Oxford · Turin
An STD-awareness web app and startup venture
Born from the SEI Inventor Program, Bridge was a startup venture: a web app for STD awareness. It built partnerships with Italian Local Health Boards (ASL), ran an ML risk survey, and was pursued for two years before it closed.
Closed after two years: the business model was not sustainable, and the team effort was not enough. He presents this failure openly.
Read more in the PortfolioRan forTwo years
A personal venture, stay tuned
A personal venture in development, combining wearable firmware, a mobile app and a backend.
Read more in the PortfolioStatusStay tuned
Education
ITI Archimede, Catania
Built SONNY here, a robot that danced, talked and saw. Winner of RomeCup 2017.
Experience
Studio P (Pacolandia), Catania
Tourist animation and entertainment for public and private events.
Education
Politecnico di Torino
Thesis on bioinformatic methods to predict protein structure and mutation.
Education
Politecnico di Torino
Biomedical Instrumentation minor. Health data science, signal processing, biomechanics, wearable technology.
Research
BMHT Lab, ETH Zürich
ECG Construction from Fingertip and Remote Photoplethysmography. 28 ECTS.
Experience
Maxwell Biosystems AG, Zürich
Hardware prototyping and test protocols, ETL pipelines, data visualisation dashboards, and reporting.
Research
University of Zürich · Lake Lucerne Institute, Vitznau
Upper-limb motor control and recovery after stroke, focusing on corticospinal and reticulospinal pathway interactions.
Research
Kobe, Japan
Presented an abstract and poster on the MODUS project (formerly Izar): Context-Dependent Effects of Grip Force on the Strength–Dexterity Trade-Off in Dexterous Force Control.
A conference visit.
What I do when nobody is measuring anything.
Clubbing, organising parties, a rooftop full of friends. I like a room full of people that works.
Karate to black belt, then artistic gymnastics, now strength training. Football watched, played, and turned into data.
Basically an average Italian: I cook, I have opinions about it, and I will share both.
Born on the east coast of Sicily. The sea is the first thing about me and it does not wear off.
I read philosophy, the Neoplatonists above all. The Greco-Roman thread is where I think from.
A Catholic Christian. It belongs on this page as much as the rest.