Roberto Piola

Curriculum vitae et studiorum

Personal Data

Introduction

Education

Degree in Computing Science cum laude obtained from the University of Torino, on the 17th of february 1994. The curriculum was oriented towards ``Artificial Intelligence".
The research thesis, entitled ``Synthesis and on-line refinement of controllers for industrial robots" (advisor prof. A. Giordana), was about the development of new fuzzy controller architectures, able to tune themselves by means of both supervised and unsupervised learning.

Post-graduate courses: ``Machine Learning Summer School", organized by MLnet in Dourdan (France), September 1994.

Since February 1995, Ph.D. courses at the University of Torino and attendance to the first and second Italian schools of the Doctorates of Philosophy in Computer Science, organized in Pontignano (Siena), in october 1995 and may/june 1996.

April 1998: Cisco "SupportPro" certificate.

Ph.D. in Computer Science obtained in february 1999, with a thesis entitled "Refinement of Knowledge Bases in First-Order Logics by means of Neural Networks".

March 1999: Cisco "Network Design Specialist" Certification.

December 2006: Watchguard Certification

February 2008: Cisco CCENT Certification

May 2008: Cisco CCNA (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) Certification

September 2008: Cisco CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate) Certification

June 2009: Cisco DCNID (Datacenter Network Infrastructure Designer) Certification

June 2009: Cisco SMB Select Technical Certification

October 2009: Cisco DCASD (Datacenter Application Services Design) Certification

Januuary 2010: Cisco DCASI (Datacenter Application Services Implementation) Certification

June 2010: Cisco CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) Certification

February 2011: Cisco DCNI (Cisco Certified Datacenter Field Engineer) Certification

May 2011: Cisco CCDP (Cisco Certified Design Professional) Certification

Research activities

The Ph.D. thesis addresses the problem of raising the methods for theory refinement by means of neural networks, already developed in the propositional framework, to the use of First Order Logics.

Known computing environments and tools

• MS-DOS, MS-Windows, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/2003/XP/2008/Vista/7, Windows CE and Unix (Linux, SunOS, Solaris, Digital Unix, HP-UX).
• Programming graphical applications (Borland ObjectVision and Microsoft VisualC++, Windows CE, X-View, Java).
• Database servers: Microsoft Sql, Postgres, MySQL, Oracle
• 4th generation languages: dbaseIII/IV, Paradox, SQL, MS Access.
• C, C++, LISP, Prolog, SmallTalk, Eiffel, Pascal, Clipper, Forth, Ada, Fortran, BASIC, PAL, ObjectPal, Java, Javascript, ASP, VBS, PHP.
• Tool for distributed computing: PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine).
• WEB publishing tools: HTML, http-servers (httpd, Spinner, Netscape communication server, Roxen, Apache, Java Web Server), Cgi-bin.
• Set-up and administration of internet/intranet sites, with both unix and Windows NT IIS.
• WAN routers: Cisco, CompatibleSystems, Bay Network, ZyXel, 3com, zebra/Quagga.
• Firewalls: Cisco, Firebox, Sonicwall, Clavister, Linux iptables.
• WAP environment (Nokia Wap server and the development of a reduced wap server for embedded systems)
• Development environment for embedded systems (Cobox Micro by Lantronix and Ubicom IP 2022)
• Development of software for TomTom and Android embedded devices
• Voip Platforms: Cisco, Linksys, GnuGK, Asterisk, Swyx
• Virtualization platforms: Xen and VMWare
• Clustering: heartbeat, RedHat Cluster Manager, Microsft Cluster Services, Oracle Real Application Cluster

Known languages

Work experiences

February 1994-october 1994: administrative part-time staff for the European Science Foundation.

October 1994: two-weeks stage at the Leuven Catholic University (Belgium), in the Robotics department.

November 1994-october 1995: military service at the ``Scuola d'Applicazione d'Arma di Torino", with the duty of teaching assistant of theoretical computer science.

Since july 1995: part-time consultant for Pinerolo Internetworking (Internet ServiceProvider).

October 1995-febbruary 1996: teaching assistant of theory and applications of computer science at the ``Scuola d'Applicazione d'Arma di Torino".

Since february 1996: part-time consultant for Internet House and MediaLine (Internet Service Provider).

Since april 1997: part-time consultant for Internet House and Magellano (Internet Service Provider).

Since september 1997: contributor for the magazine ``Login", published by Infomedia.

Novembre 1997-February 1998: stage at the Aberdeen University (UK).

Since march 1998: member of the Gruppo IH firm.

Since november 1998: full-time consultant for Gruppo IH, in the networking, security and system integration fields; acting also as a consultant for Gruppo IH customers and as a programmer engaged in the building of internet and intranet sites

April 2000 to the end of 2002: partially employed also as firmware engineer by Inovatec S.p.A.

Since december 2002: as a consultant from Gruppo IH, involved in the deployment of a large-scale voice/data network extending across Italy and Romania: Connet-ro (www.connet-ro.com)

Since february 2007: full-time employed at Visiant, as a Senior Network Engineer, with the task of deploying and maintaining large-scale IP networks and specialized systems (mainly linux hosts, cisco routers, blade servers). During this period some notable works were the IH.MIS/MX mail filtering system, some plugins for the freeware SquirrelMail platform, and some activity as Virus Hunter for ClamAV.

Since January 2012: always employed at Visiant Outsourcing Srl, experience is accumulated about managing an international network of call centers for the controlling company, Visiant Contact Srl (an enterprise with 3500 employees).

Since february 2014: employed full time at Jacobacci&Partners SpA in Turin, as a Network&Systems administrator.

Milestones, success stories and references

1994: an excerpt of my thesis is published in the “proceedings of the IEEE”. Some of the software I wrote for the thesis is evaluated at the NASA JPL.

1997-2010: full outsourcing of the IT for the retail chains Megatel, Gigatel, 4G and thereafter Wind (cell phones)

1998-today: WAN management and integration of e-mail system with an IBM AS400 for Jacobacci & Partners SpA (one of the most active Law firms in Torino, specialist in Intellecutal Property)

1999: writing of a java application for consultation of technical documentation about the ATMosfera network, on behalf of Telecom Italia / CSELT

2001: for Inovatec (now Riello UPS): integration of web and WAP server on a microcontroller for the SNMP management of UPS

2006: some lines of code find their way into major Linux distros (in the “vacation” utility)

2007: simultaneous relocation of two datecenters and their merge, over a weekend

2008: overnight relocation of all the servers for Megatel SpA from their premises in Chieri (TO) to our datacenter in Milan area

2010: finalist in section “Datacenter virtualization” of the contest “Cisco Innovate”

2011: management of the whole of Visiant Contact network

Moreover, I managed the networks and the datacenter hosting for major companies like RGI (services for insurance companies), Il Sole 24 ore Busienss Media (technical publishing), S.IN.T.

Publications

1. Article ``IBMISO/ISOIBM" and companion software, PC Floppy, 24, March 1989
2. Article ``ReadKbd" and companion software, PC Floppy, 33, January 1990
3. Article ``Tformat" and companion software, PC Floppy, 38, June 1990
4. Ristrutturare i files di Paradox, PC Magazine (italian edition), 66, November 1990
5. R. Piola: ``Evolutionary Solutions to a Highly Constrained Combinatorial Problem", IEEE Conference on Genetic Algorithms, Orlando, Florida, 1994 .
6. C. Baroglio, M. Nuttin, R. Piola, H. Van Brussel: ``Fuzzy Controller Synthesis in Robotic Assembly: Procedure and Experiments", IEEE Conference on Fuzzy Systems, Orlando, Florida, 1994.
7. C. Baroglio, A. Giordana, R.Piola: ``Learning Fuzzy Controllers for Industrial Robots", Second European Congress on Intelligent Tecniques and Soft Computing (EUFIT), Aachen, Germania, 1994.
8. C. Baroglio, A. Giordana, R.Piola: ``Learning Fuzzy Controllers by means of Symbolic Induction, backpropagation and Reinforcement Learning", Giornate di studio AI*IA sull'apprendimento automatico, Parma, Italy, 1994.
9. C. Baroglio, A. Giordana e R. Piola: ``Learning Controllers from Examples", in Proceedings of the second International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence Techniques, Brno, Czech Republic, September 1995.
10. M. Botta, G. Lo Bello e R. Piola, ``Monitoring machine behaviors using fuzzy controllers", in Proc. of the 4th Workshop on Learning Robots, Karlsruhe, Germany, December 1995.
11. C. Baroglio, A. Giordana, G. Lo Bello, R.Piola: ``Learning control Functions from Examples", presented at the WorkShop on Statistics and Machine Learning della ECML-94, Catania, Italy, 1994 and published in the book Charles Taylor and Reza Nakhaeizadeh (eds.) Statistics and Machine Learning: The Interface, Wiley Books (1996).
12. C. Baroglio, A. Giordana, M. Kaiser, M. Nuttin e R. Piola: ``Learning Controllers for Industrial Robots", Machine Learning Journal 23 (1996).
13. R. Piola: ``Storia di un segnale", Login 7 (nov/dec 1997)
14. G. Balestrieri, R. Piola: ``Connettere Computer", Login 7 (nov/dec 1997)
15. M. Botta, A. Giordana, R. Piola: ``FONN: Combining First Order Logic with Connectionist Learning", 14th International Conference on Machine Learning ICML-97, Nashville, TN, july 1997, Morgan Kaufmann.
16. M. Botta, A. Giordana, R. Piola: ``Refining Numerical Terms in Horn Clauses" in M. Lenzerini ed. AI*IA 97: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Proceedings, Springer-Verlag LNAI-1321, Roma, Italy, september 1997.
17. M. Botta, A. Giordana, R. Piola: ``Refining First Order Theories with Neural Networks" in Z.B. Ras and A. Skowron (eds) ISMIS 97: Foundations of Intelligent Systems, Proceedings, Springer Verlag LNAI-1325, Charlotte, North Carolina, october 1997.
18. C. Baroglio, A. Giordana, R. Piola: ``Learning Function Approximators" in A. Giordana e M. Kaiser (eds) Making Robots Smart, Kluwer Academic Publishers (in press)
19. M. Botta, A. Giordana, R. Piola: ``An Integrated Framework for Learning Numerical Terms in FOL" in European Conference on Artificial Intelligence ECAI-98, Proceedings, Brighton (UK), 1998
20. M. Botta, R. Piola: ``Refining Numerical Terms in Structured FOL Theories" in Multistragey Learning Workshop MSL98, Proceedings, Desenzano del Garda (Italy), 1998
21. R. Piola: ``netmask=255.255.255.??? - parte prima" Login n. 11 (July 1998)
22. R. Piola: ``Login Look: Cisco AS 5200" Login n. 11 (July 1998)
23. R. Piola: ``Login Look: CiscoView" Login n. 11 (July 1998)
24. R. Piola: ``netmask=255.255.255.??? - parte seconda" Login n. 12 (September 1998)
25. M. Botta, R. Piola: ``Refining Numerical Constants in First Order Logic Theories", to appear in Machine Learning, 1999
26. R. Piola, F. Mitchell, D. Sleeman: ``Applying the FONN framework to a complex industrial task", Technical Report AUCS/TR9909, Department of Computer Science, University of Aberdeen, 1999.