Prof. Marco Gavanelli is Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of Ferrara since 2014. He graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Bologna and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His research primarily focuses on Logic Programming and Constraint Programming, with additional interests in Abductive Reasoning and Intelligent Agents. He is an expert in Artificial Intelligence Techniques and Languages for Constrained Optimization, which he has applied across various fields, including electronics, medicine, manufacturing, and hydraulics. 

Prof. Gavanelli serves as President of the Italian Association for Logic Programming (Gruppo ricercatori e Utenti Logic Programming, GULP) and as Conference Coordinator for the Association for Logic Programming. He received the Best Paper Award at the 27th International Conference on Logic Programming.

He is the coordinator of the Laurea Course (B.Sc.) in Electronics and Informatics Engineering, and of the Laurea Magistrale (M.Sc.) courses in Electronics Engineering for ICT and of Computer Science and Automation Engineering.

For a list of publications see: Publications on university of Ferrara web page, DBLP, Google Scholar, ORCID, Semantic Scholar, Scopus.

• ePolicy Project: Scientific coordinator of the research unit at the University of Ferrara. This European project (Grant agreement no: 288147) received a final evaluation of "Excellent progress" from the European Commission.

• S4C | Support System for Sustainable Smart Cities (2023-2025) funded by Regione Emilia-Romagna (PR FESR 2021-2027), within the Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) and the Cohesion Development Fund

• PolisEye Project: Involved in the research project “POLIcy Support systEm for smart citY data governancE,” funded by the POR FESR Emilia-Romagna 2014-2020 as part of the Smart Specialization Strategy (S3).

• Green-Smart Technology Project: Participated in the POR-FESR 2014-2020 initiative aimed at sustainable water resource management in buildings and urban areas.

• Technopole Project: initiative for the creation of the Technopole of Ferrara, established through a convention between the Emilia-Romagna Region and the University of Ferrara, as part of the POR FESR 2007-2013 for industrial research and technology transfer.

• GST4Water Project: Progetto Green-Smart Technology per l’utilizzo sostenibile della risorsa idrica negli edifici e in ambito urbano POR-FESR 2014-2020.

• SUPER Project: Progetto 7239/SUPER POR - FESR 2014-2020 Asse 1 Azione 1.5.1 Bando per progetti di supporto alle infrastrutture della ricerca considerate critiche/cruciali per i sistemi regionali

• CURSA Project: Progetto CURSA processi di digitalizzazione delle pubbliche amministrazioni e di ambiti produttivi secondo le linee guida del programma industria 4.0 , finanziato dal MIUR 2021-2024. CUP: B53C21001630001

• SORT Project: Sviluppo di sistemi tecnologici innovativi integrati per lo Spacchettamento, l’ORganizzazione delle scorte e il Tracciamento dei prodotti alimentari sprecati finalizzati alla loro valorizzazione. Iniziativa Smart Cities and Communities and Social Innovation, finanziata dal MIUR nell’ambito dell’Avviso Prot 391/Ric. del 5 luglio 2012 - Codice Progetto SCN 00367

• AIDA4Edge Project: Twinning HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-02-01 Twinning for Excellence in Adaptive Edge AI (AIDA4Edge) 2024-2027

• LESS GAS Project: Sistema informatico basato su tecnologie di Machine Learning per il supporto alle decisioni nella conduzione di impianti industriali con lo scopo di ottimizzare le prestazioni di macchinari, turbogeneratori, turbocompressori o altri, finalizzato al risparmio energetico e alla riduzione di consumi di gas. MISE - Accordi per l’innovazione 2023. CUP: B79J25000600005

• GNCS Projects: 

  • “DECORE - A DEClarative approach for Object REconstruction” (2017)

  • “Methods for handling uncertainty and imprecision in knowledge representation and revision” (2019)

  • "NoRMA: Automazione del ragionamento non-monotono su moderne architetture parallele” (2020)

  • "InSANE: Investigating Sparse Algorithms in the post von Neumann Era” (2022)

  • “ARICSxAI: Automated Reasoning Interpretation of Ct-Scans and xAI” (2023)

• Editorial Roles

  • Editorial Board Member:

    • Journal of Computer Science

    • Intelligenza Artificiale (Area chair for Constraints and Satisfiability)

    • Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Associate Editor)

  • Area Editor: ALP Newsletter focusing on applications of logic programming.

• Conference and Workshop Organization

  • Conference General Chair of the 34th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2018), July 14​-​17 2018, Oxford, UK

  • Program Co-chair PADL 2016: Eighteenth International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, 18-19 January 2016

  • Program co-chair: AI*IA 2015: 14th Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, Ferrara 23-25 September 2015

  • Program co-chair: ICLP DC 2013: Nineth ICLP Doctoral Consortium, Istanbul, Turkey, 24 August 2013.

  • Program co-chair: ICLP DC 2012: Eighth ICLP Doctoral Consortium, Budapest, Hungary, 4th of September 2012.

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2011: 18th RCRA International Workshop on "Experimental Evaluation of Algorithms for solving problems with combinatorial explosion", Barcelona, Spain, 17-18 July 2011.

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2010: 17th RCRA International Workshop on "Experimental evaluation of algorithms for solving problems with combinatorial explosion" RCRA 2010 Bologna, Italy, June 10-11, 2010.

  • Conference co-chair: CP-AI-OR 2010: Conference chair of the seventh International Conference on Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Operations Research (OR) techniques in Constraint Programming. Bologna, Italy, June 14-18, 2010.

  • Program co-chair: CILC 2009: 24-esimo Convegno Italiano di Logica Computazionale. 25-26 June 2009, Ferrara, Italy.

  • Special Session on "Experimentation of Combinatorial Algorithms" at the XI Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2009)

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2009: The 16th RCRA workshop on Experimental Evaluation of Algorithms for Solving Problems with Combinatorial Explosion, Reggio Emilia, Italy, December 11-12, 2009

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2008 The 15th RCRA workshop on Experimental Evaluation of Algorithms for Solving Problems with Combinatorial Explosion (Udine, December 12-13, 2008).

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2007 RCRA 2007: Experimental Evaluation of Algorithms for Solving Problems with Combinatorial Explosion (Roma, July 5-6, 2007).

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2006: Analisi sperimentale e benchmark di algoritmi per l'Intelligenza Artificiale (Udine, June 23rd, 2006).

  • Program co-chair: RCRA 2005: Analisi sperimentale e benchmark di algoritmi per l'Intelligenza Artificiale (Ferrara, June 10th, 2005).

• Federico Chesani e Marco Gavanelli: Specification and Verification of Agent Interaction Using Computational Logic: the tool SOCS-SI. Computational Logic in Multi-Agent Systems: Sixth International Workshop. City University London, UK, June 27-29, 2005.

• Conferencia Magistral “Constraint Satisfaction Problems” CONAIS 2010, Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico, 24 September 2010.

• Optimal Valve Placement in Water Distribution Networks with CLP(FD) at the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13, CORE A∗), August 3-9, 2013, Beijing, China (joint work with Massimiliano Cattafi, Maddalena Nonato, Stefano Alvisi and Marco Franchini).

• Invited speaker at the 19th Workshop on Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms 18 July 2026, Lisbon, Portugal, 9th Federated Logic Conference (FLoC).

• Invited tutorial: Specifica e verifica dell’interazione fra agenti usando SOCS-SI, together with Federico Chesani, workshop CILC 2005 (Convegno Italiano di Logica Computazionale), Roma, Italy, 2015.

• Invited Speaker: Logic-Based Benders Decomposition: an opportunity for logic programming applications at CILC 2023 - 38th Italian Conference on Computational Logic, Udine, June 21-23, 2023.

• Current Roles

  • Coordinator of undergraduate and master's degree programs: 

    • Laurea (BSc) in Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Ferrara

    • Laurea Magistrale (MSc) in Electronics for ICT at the University of Ferrara

    • Laurea magistrale (MSc) in Computer Science and Automation at the University of Ferrara

• Teaching

  • Fondamenti di Informatica e laboratorio, modulo A (Foundations of Computer Science), Laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica e Informatica

  • Intelligenza Artificiale per l'Ottimizzazione Vincolata (Artificial Intelligence for constrained optimization), Laurea Magistrale in Ingegneria Informatica e dell'Automazione e Intelligenza Artificiale, Data Science e Big Data

  • Linguaggi e Traduttori (Programming languages and translators) Laurea Magistrale in Ingegneria Informatica e dell'Automazione e Intelligenza Artificiale, Data Science e Big Data

  • Module of the course Applicazioni dell'Intelligenza Artificiale in Medicina (Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine), Laurea Magistrale a ciclo unico in medicina e chirurgia

  • Module Elementi di Informatica in Ambito Sanitario (Elements of Computer Science in Healthcare), Corsi di Laurea Magistrale in Scienze infermieristiche e ostetriche, Scienze delle professioni sanitarie tecniche diagnostiche

  • Module Principi di Intelligenza Artificiale in Riabilitazione (Principles of Artificial Intelligence in Rehabilitation), corso di laurea in Scienze delle professioni sanitarie tecniche diagnostiche

• PhD Supervision: Supervised doctoral candidates including: 

  • Massimiliano Cattafi

  • Andrea Peano

  • Alessandro Bertagnon

  • Dominik Miotla