Informatics Europe Best Dissertation Award 2025 to an USI PhD graduate

Andrea Cini, PhD graduate from the Faculty of Informatics at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), is the winner of the 2025 Informatics Europe Best Dissertation Award, an international award that recognises the best doctoral theses in informatics presented at European universities each year.

Cini's thesis, "Graph Deep Learning for Time Series Forecasting", was written under the supervision of Prof. Cesare Alippi, and proposes innovative artificial intelligence methods aimed at improving the accuracy and effectiveness of prediction models by exploiting relational information between data.

The award, presented by Informatics Europe - an association that brings together over 200 academic institutions in more than 30 European countries - recognises scientific excellence and the impact of a doctoral thesis in the field of informatics. For the 2025 edition, 34 applications were received, the highest number ever recorded since the initiative began.

The winner was announced during the European Informatics Leaders Summit 2025 (ECSS), held in Rennes, France, on 27 October. The award, which includes a cash prize and the publication of the thesis in a series edited by Springer Nature, represents an important milestone for the USI scientific community and confirms the excellent quality of the research conducted at the Faculty of Informatics.