Fabio Crestani appointed Pro-rector for internationalisation

Prof. Fabio Crestani has been appointed Pro-rector for internationalisation at USI and will assist the other members of the Rectorate in the overall management of the University, with particular attention to aspects relating to international relations.

Fabio Crestani has been a full professor at USI Faculty of Informatics since January 2007. Before coming to Lugano, he was (full) Professor at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (UK) since 2000. During that time he was a Visiting Professor at IMAG (France), and spent a year sabbatical at UC Berkeley (USA) and Xerox PARC (USA). In 1997-1999 he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow (UK), at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley (USA), and at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK). Earlier, in 1992-97 he was Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova (Italy).

While at USI, Fabio Crestani held a Catedra de Excellencia at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), an Isambard Kingdom Brunell Fellowship at the University of Portsmouth (UK) and spent sabbaticals at Yahoo! (USA) and the National Intitute of Informatics in Tokyo (Japan).

Fabio Crestani holds a degree in Statistics from the University of Padova (Italy) and an MSc and PhD in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow (UK). His main research areas are Information Retrieval, Text Mining and Digital Libraries. He has authored one book, co-edited 14 and published over 300 articles. He was editor-in-chief of Information Processing and Management (Elsevier) from 2008 to 2015 and is still a member of the editorial board of a number of journals.

The Rectorate is one of USI's central bodies, together with the University Council and the Academic Senate. It is responsible for the smooth running of the entire university and draws up its planning and development activities. The USI Rectorate includes the Rector, the Pro-rectors, the Secretary General and the Director of Operations and its functions are specified in the Statute of the Università della Svizzera italiana. The current members are Luisa Lambertini (Rector), Gabriele Balbi (Pro-Rector for Education and Students' Experience), Patrick Gagliardini (Pro-Rector for Research), Luca Maria Gambardella (Pro-Rector for Innovation and Corporate Relations), Sonja Hildebrand (Pro-Rector for Research in the Humanities and Equal Opportunities), Fabio Crestani (Pro-Rector for Internationalisation), Giovanni Zavaritt (Secretary General) and Marvin Blumer (Director of Operations).

At the same time, Pro-rector Cesare Alippi's term in the Rectorate draws to an end: the University thanks him for his great commitment in the first three years of the Pro-rectorate for Internationalisation.