Language, Speech and Interaction
Our main areas of interest are speech, vision and language processing, machine learning and interaction.
The purpose of our research is to investigate how humans process speech, language and vision, and to design mathematical models for automatic processing that can be used with communicating machines.
Our studies rely on computational models from batch or on-line examples and provide predictive models for data classification, automatic sequence labelling and structure inference.
Another research area the group is involved in is human-centered communication systems. We investigate models of interactions in any ICT scenario, such as speech-to-speech, speech-to-web and multimodal interactions. Our focus is both on the computational aspect of the interaction models as well as on the usability of user interfaces.
Finally, we also devote our attention to collaborative systems and web architecture. We are active in the design of software architecture for advanced web and multimedia collaborative systems.
Publications
31 publications for 13 currently enrolled students
Towards Self-configuring Efficient Neural Architectures for Automatic Speech Recognition
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
First-AID: the first Annotation Interface for grounded Dialogues
Menini, Stefano; Russo, Daniel; Palmero Aprosio, Alessio; Guerini, Marco
in Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 3: System Demonstrations), Vienna, Austria: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2025, p. 563-571. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-253-4. Proceedings of: 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Vienna, Austria, July 27–August 1st, 2025. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-demo.54
I Want to Break Free! Persuasion and Anti-Social Behavior of LLMs in Multi-Agent Settings with Social Hierarchy
Campedelli, Gian Maria; Penzo, Nicolo'; Stefan, Massimo; Dessi, Roberto; Guerini, Marco; Lepri, Bruno; Staiano, Jacopo
in TRANSACTIONS ON MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH, v. 2025, n. 11 (2025), p. 1-65. - Publication URL
The Unheard Alternative: Contrastive Explanations for Speech-to-Text Models
Conti, Lina; Fucci, Dennis; Gaido, Marco; Negri, Matteo; Wisniewski, Guillaume; Bentivogli, Luisa
in Proceedings of the 8th BlackboxNLP Workshop: Analyzing and Interpreting Neural Networks for NLP, Suzhou: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2025, p. 398-414. Proceedings of: BlackboxNLP Workshop: Analyzing and Interpreting Neural Networks for NLP, Suzhou, 9th November 2025. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2025.blackboxnlp-1.23
Face the Facts! Evaluating RAG-based Pipelines for Professional Fact-Checking
Russo, Daniel; Menini, Stefano; Staiano, Jacopo; Guerini, Marco
in Proceedings of the 18th International Natural Language Generation Conference, Stroudsburg, PA, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2025, p. 846-865. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-321-0. Proceedings of: INLG 2025, Hanoi, Vietnam, 29th October - 2nd November 2025. - Publication URL
CIVET: Systematic Evaluation of Understanding in VLMs
Rizzoli, Massimo; Alghisi, Simone; Khomyn, Olha; Roccabruna, Gabriel; Mousavi, Seyed Mahed; Riccardi, Giuseppe
in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, 209 N. Eighth Street, Stroudsburg, PA, USA, 18360: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2025, p. 4462-4480. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-335-7. Proceedings of: ACL, Suzhou, China, 4th November-9th November 2025. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2025.findings-emnlp.239
A TinyML Approach for the Classification of Bean Crop Diseases
Hassan, Mir; Raza, Wamiq; Fadeeva, Varvara; Custode, Leonardo Lucio; Iacca, Giovanni
in 2025 IEEE 101st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2025-Spring), New York, NY, USA: IEEE, 2025, p. 1-5. - (IEEE VTS ... VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE). - ISBN: 9798331531478. Proceedings of: 101st IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC 2025-Spring 2025, Oslo, 17th June-20th June 2025. - DOI: 10.1109/vtc2025-spring65109.2025.11174775
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
A Federated Multi-Task Learning Framework with Dual Attention Mechanisms for Smart Buildings
Hassan, Mir; Yildrim, Kasim Sinan; Iacca, Giovanni
in 2025 IEEE 101st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2025-Spring), New York, NY, USA: IEEE, 2025, p. 1-7. - (IEEE VTS ... VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE). - ISBN: 9798331531478. Proceedings of: 101st IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC 2025-Spring 2025, Oslo, 17th June-20th June 2025. - DOI: 10.1109/vtc2025-spring65109.2025.11174387
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
Enhancing Communication-Efficient Federated Learning for Human Activity Recognition Through Knowledge Distillation
Bilal, Hafiz Muhammad; Hassan, Mir; Iacca, Giovanni
in 2025 IEEE 101st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2025-Spring), New York, NY, USA: IEEE, 2025, p. 1-7. - (IEEE VTS ... VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE). - ISBN: 9798331531478. Proceedings of: 101st IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC 2025-Spring 2025, Oslo, 17th June-20th June 2025. - DOI: 10.1109/vtc2025-spring65109.2025.11174325
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
Decentralized IoT-Edge Computing: An LSTM-Based Federated Learning Framework for Personalized Task Failure Prediction
Ali, Nawaz; Hassan, Mir; Sodhro, Ali Hassan; Aloi, Gianluca; Gravina, Raffaele; Savaglio, Claudio; Iacca, Giovanni; Fortino, Giancarlo
in 2025 IEEE 101st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2025-Spring), New York, NY, USA: IEEE, 2025, p. 1-7. - (IEEE VTS ... VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE). - ISBN: 9798331531478. Proceedings of: 101st IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC 2025-Spring 2025, Oslo, 17th June-20th June 2025. - DOI: 10.1109/vtc2025-spring65109.2025.11174340
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
When Harry Meets Superman: The Role of The Interlocutor in Persona-Based Dialogue Generation
Occhipinti, Daniela; Guerini, Marco; Nissim, Malvina
in Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), Vienna, Austria: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2025, p. 17964-17985. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-251-0. Proceedings of: ACL 2025, Vienna, Austria, July 27–August 1st, 2025. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.879
Proximity-Aware Federated Learning for Symbiotic Task Offloading in Vehicular Edge Intelligence
Ali, Nawaz; Hassan, Mir; Hassan Sodhro, Ali; Aloi, Gianluca; Gravina, Raffaele; Iacca, Giovanni; De Rango, Floriano
in IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, v. 2025, (2025). - DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2025.3591253
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
TrenTeam at Multilingual Counterspeech Generation: Multilingual Passage Re-Ranking Approaches for Knowledge-Driven Counterspeech Generation Against Hate
Russo, D.
in Proceedings - International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING, 317 Sidney Baker Street S., Suite 400-134, Kerrville, TX 78028, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2025, p. 77-91. - ISBN: 9798891762077. Proceedings of: 1st Workshop on Multilingual Counterspeech Generation, MCG 2025 with Shared Task on Multilingual Counterspeech Generation, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 2025
A Genetic Algorithm-Based Parameter Selection for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning
Hassan, Mir; Yildirim, Kasim Sinan; Iacca, Giovanni
in Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications 2025), Cham: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2025, p. 437-453. - (LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE). - ISBN: 9783031900648. Proceedings of: 28th European Conference on Applications of Evolutionary Computation, EvoApplications 2025, held as part of EvoStar 2025, Trieste, 23rd April-25th April 2025. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-90065-5_27
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
To Click it or not to Click it: An Italian Dataset for Neutralising Clickbait Headlines
Russo, Daniel; Araque, Oscar; Guerini, Marco
in CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Pisa, Italy: CEUR-WS, 2024. - (CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS). Proceedings of: 10th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics, CLiC-it 2024, Pisa, Italy, Dec 04-06, 2024. - Publication URL
Do LLMs suffer from Multi-Party Hangover? A Diagnostic Approach to Addressee Recognition and Response Selection in Conversations
Penzo, Nicolò; Sajedinia, Maryam; Lepri, Bruno; Tonelli, Sara; Guerini, Marco
in Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Kerrville, TX: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 11210-11233. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-164-3. Proceedings of: 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP 2024, Miami, Florida, USA, November 12-16, 2024. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-main.628
Fine-tuning with HED-IT: The impact of human post-editing for dialogical language models
Occhipinti, Daniela; Marchi, Michele; Mondella, Irene; Lai, Huiyuan; Dell’Orletta, Felice; Nissim, Malvina; Guerini, Marco
in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024, Bangkok, Thailand: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 11892-11907. - (PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE - ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS. MEETING). - ISBN: 979-8-89176-099-8. Proceedings of: ACL 2024, Bangkok, Thailand, August 11–16, 2024. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.707
Putting Context in Context: the Impact of Discussion Structure on Text Classification
Penzo, Nicolò; Longa, Antonio; Lepri, Bruno; Tonelli, Sara; Guerini, Marco
in Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), Kerrville, TX: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 1793-1811. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-088-2. Proceedings of: 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, St. Julian’s, Malta, March 17-22, 2024. - Publication URL
DyKnow: Dynamically Verifying Time-Sensitive Factual Knowledge in LLMs
Mousavi, Seyed Mahed; Alghisi, Simone; Riccardi, Giuseppe
in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024, Miami, Florida, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 8014-8029. Proceedings of: EMNLP2024, Miami, Florida, USA, november 2024. - Publication URL
Will LLMs Replace the Encoder-Only Models in Temporal Relation Classification?
Roccabruna, Gabriel; Rizzoli, Massimo; Riccardi, Giuseppe
in Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Miami, Florida, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 20402-20415. - ISBN: 9798891761643. Proceedings of: 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP 2024, Miami, Florida, USA, 12th November - 16th November 2024. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-main.1136
Should We Fine-Tune or RAG? Evaluating Different Techniques to Adapt LLMs for Dialogue
Alghisi, Simone; Rizzoli, Massimo; Roccabruna, Gabriel; Mousavi, Seyed Mahed; Riccardi, Giuseppe
in Proceedings of the 17th International Natural Language Generation Conference, Association for Computational Linguistics: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 180-197. Proceedings of: INLG 2024, Tokyo, Japan, 23/09/2024 - 27/09/2024. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2024.inlg-main.15
Nesciun Lengaz Lascià Endò: Machine Translation for Fassa Ladin
Valer, Giovanni; Penzo, Nicolò; Staiano, Jacopo
in The Tenth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics: Proceedings of the Conference, Aachen: CEUR, 2024. - (CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS). Proceedings of: CLiC-it 2024, Pisa, 4th-6th December 2024. - Publication URL
Are LLMs Robust for Spoken Dialogues?
Mousavi, Seyed Mahed; Roccabruna, Gabriel; Alghisi, Simone; Rizzoli, Massimo; Ravanelli, Mirco; Riccardi, Giuseppe
in Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology, sapporo, Japan: 14th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology, 2024. Proceedings of: IWSDS2024, JAPAN, 04/03/2024
PRODIGy: a PROfile-based DIalogue Generation dataset
Occhipinti, Daniela; Tekiroglu, Serra Sinem; Guerini, Marco
in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2024, Mexico City, Mexico: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2024, p. 3500-3514. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-119-3. Proceedings of: NAACL 2024, Mexico City, Mexico, June 16–21, 2024. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2024.findings-naacl.222
Gender Neutralization for an Inclusive Machine Translation: from
Theoretical Foundations to Open Challenges
Piergentili, Andrea; Fucci, Dennis; Savoldi, Beatrice; Bentivogli, Luisa; Negri, Matteo
in Proceedings of the first Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies, Tampere: ACL anthology, 2023. Proceedings of: GITT, Tampere, 15/06/2023. - Publication URL
FedEdge: Federated Learning with Docker and Kubernetes for Scalable and Efficient Edge Computing
Hassan, Mir; Leonardo, Lucio; Yildirim, Sinan; Iacca, Giovanni
in EWSN '23: Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on embedded Wireless Systems and Networks, New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2023, p. 339-344. - (INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EMBEDDED WIRELESS SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS (EWSN) ...). Proceedings of: The International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN 2023), Rende, Italy, 25th -27th September 2023. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.5555/3639940.3639994
[other topics: Machine Learning and Intelligent Optimization
Hi Guys or Hi Folks? Benchmarking Gender-Neutral Machine Translation with the GeNTE Corpus
Piergentili, Andrea; Savoldi, Beatrice; Fucci, Dennis; Negri, Matteo; Bentivogli, Luisa
in Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Singapore: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023. Proceedings of: Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Singapore, 6 –10, December, 2023. - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2023.emnlp-main.873
Using Artificial French Data to Understand the Emergence of Gender Bias in Transformer Language Models
Conti, Lina; Wisniewski, Guillaume
in EMNLP 2023 - 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Proceedings, Singapore: Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2023, p. 10362-10371. - ISBN: 9798891760608. Proceedings of: 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP 2023, Singapore, 2023. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2023.emnlp-main.641
Countering Misinformation via Emotional Response Generation
Russo, Daniel; Kaszefski-Yaschuk, Shane; Staiano, Jacopo; Guerini, Marco
in The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Proceedings of the Conference, Stroudsburg PA, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023, p. 11476-11492. - ISBN: 979-8-89176-060-8. Proceedings of: EMNLP 2023, Singapore, 6th-10th December 2023. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.18653/v1/2023.emnlp-main.703
PoliticIT at EVALITA 2023: Overview of the Political Ideology Detection in Italian Texts Task
Russo, D.; Jimenez-Zafra, S. M.; Garcia-Diaz, J. A.; Caselli, T.; Guerini, M.; Alfonso Urena-Lopez, L.; Valencia-Garcia, R.
in CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Aachen: CEUR-WS, 2023. - (CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS). Proceedings of: 8th Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop, EVALITA 2023, Parma, Italy, 7–8 September 2023. - Publication URL
Benchmarking the Generation of Fact Checking Explanations
Russo, Daniel; Tekiroğlu, Serra Sinem; Guerini, Marco
in TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS, v. 11, (2023), p. 1250-1264. - Publication URL . - DOI: 10.1162/tacl_a_00601
Students
 | Alghisi, Simone | s.alghisi [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Fong, Mei Yue Seraphina | meiyueseraphina.fong [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Gonella, Giacomo | giacomo.gonella [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Hannan, Abdul | abdul.hannan [at] unitn.it | webpage |
 | Hassan, Mir | mir.hassan [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Kostadinov, Samuel | samuel.kostadinov [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Loginova, Olga | olga.loginova [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Occhipinti, Daniela | daniela.occhipinti [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Penzo, Nicolò | nicolo.penzo [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Piergentili, Andrea | andrea.piergentili [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Rizzoli, Massimo | massimo.rizzoli [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Russo, Daniel | daniel.russo [at] unitn.it | webpage |
| Varella Conti, Lina | lina.varellaconti [at] unitn.it | webpage |