LEONARDI Riccardo

Prof. Riccardo LEONARDI has obtained his Diploma (1984) and Ph.D. (1987) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. In 1988, he was a post-doctoral fellow with the Information Research Laboratory of the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). From 1988 to 1991, he was a Member of Technical Staff with AT&T Bell Laboratories, performing research on image communication systems (image and video compression algorithm design). In 1991, he returned briefly to EPFL to coordinate the Digital Signal Processing research within the Signal Processing Laboratory. Since February 1992, he has been appointed at the University of Brescia (Italy) to establish research and education programmes in the field of Telecommunication. He currently coordinates accordingly a Master Degree in Communication Technologies and Multimedia, and a PhD programme in Telecommunication Engineering. Heading a group of 20 researchers and PhD students, Prof. Leonardi's main research interests cover various areas of Digital Signal Processing applications, with an emphasis towards visual communications, multimedia content analysis and multimedia creation. Prof. Leonardi also conducts research on more theoretical issues pertaining models for signal representation and approximation. He often participates to international and multidisciplinary initiatives. He has published more than 200 papers in peer reviewed international journals and in major International Conferences proceedings. Since 1997, he acts also as an evaluator and auditor for the European Union research programmes. Co-founder of a national association supporting education and research in Information and Communication Technologies (GTTI), he has been elected since 2012 as its secretary.