ACM NanoCom 2024 || Keynotes ACM NanoCom 2024

Keynote Speakers



Keynote 1: The Statistical Physics of Flocks and Swarms
Session Chair: Maurizio Magarini
Time: Monday, October 28 - 9:00-10:00 (UTC+1:00)
Irene Giardina

Irene Giardina

Professor
Department of Physics & ISC-CNR
Sapienza University of Rome
P.le A. Moro 2, 00185
Rome, Italy

Flocks and swarms represent iconic examples of living matter, where motile interacting individuals give rise to emergent global patterns. Despite the great complexity of their biological components, these groups obey robust statistical laws and can be described within a statistical physics approach. In this talk I will review our current understanding of these systems. Using experimental evidence and theoretical modeling I will show how conservation laws, interactions and motility combine together leading to non-trivial dynamics and out-of-equilibrium features on the large scale. Our analysis helps explain the mechanistic origin of efficient collective behavior in living groups and unveils new challenges in the statistical physics of biological systems.

Short Biography
Irene Giardina is Professor of theoretical physics at the Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome.

She received her M.S. in 1994 from the University of Pavia and her Ph.D. in 1998 from the Sapienza University of Rome. After postdoctoral stays at the Department of Theoretical Physics, Oxford and at Institut de Physique Théorique, CEA Saclay, she moved to the Institute for Complex Systems, CNR in Rome. In 2013 she joined the faculty of the Department of Physics, Sapienza, where she currently coordinates the Master program in Biophysics.

After working for several years on the statistical physics of glassy behavior, Dr Giardina's research focused on the physics of biological systems. In 2005 she founded with Andrea Cavagna the COBBS lab (Collective Behavior in Biological Systems), the first lab to collect 3D large-scale experimental data in the field on flocking and swarming behavior, and to build theory starting directly from the data.

In her research, she applies a statistical physics approach to understand how collective behavior emerges in animal groups and – more broadly – in biological systems. In 2021 she was awarded, together with A. Cavagna, the Delbruck prize in Biological Physics of the American Physical Society.

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Keynote 2: Actionable AI in Personalised Medicine
Session Chair: Laura Galluccio
Time: Wednesday, October 30 - 11:00-12:00 (UTC+1:00)
Pietro Lio

Pietro Liò

Professor
Department of Computer Science and Technology
University of Cambridge
FC20, William Gates Building
15 JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge, CB3 0FD

In this talk I will focus on how AI can support various clinical areas, both at the benchside and bedside levels and considering personalised and population medicine.

I will then describe a model of a digital patient twin using graph and hypergraph representation learning and considering physiological, clinical and molecular variables (multi omics and genetics). Then, I will discuss the impact of diffusion models in drug discovery.

Finally, I will discuss explainability methodologies that favour a productive interaction between clinicians and AI.

Short Biography
Pietro Liò is a full Professor at the department of Computer Science and Technology of the University of Cambridge and a member of the Artificial Intelligence group. He is also a member of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine. He has a MA from Cambridge, a PhD in Complex Systems and Non Linear Dynamics (School of Informatics, dept of Engineering of the University of Firenze, Italy) and a PhD in (Theoretical) Genetics (University of Pavia, Italy).

His research interest focuses on developing Artificial Intelligence and Computational Biology models to understand diseases complexity and address personalised and precision medicine. Current focus is on Graph Neural Network modeling.

Other Affliations: member of CAMBRIDGE CENTRE FOR AI IN MEDICINE - the Integrate Cancer Medicine Institute, the committee of MPhil in Computational Biology (Stakeholder Group for the CCBI) , steering committee of Cambridge BIG data, VPH-UK (Virtual Physiological Human), Fellow and member of the Council of Clare Hall College , member of Ellis, the European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems, a member of the Academia Europaea; listed in www.topitalianscientists.org/Top_italian_scientists_VIA-Academy.aspx

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Header Background: Duomo di Milano, Milan, Italy (Photo by Gil Garza)