Cristiano di Flora

Background and Personal Info

I am currently working as a Member of Research Staff in the Smart Space Application Platform team of the Computing Structures Core Technology Center of Nokia Research Center, Tampere (Finland). My "love story" with scientific research began in year 2000, when I was finishing my M.Sc. studies in Computer Engineering at the University of Napoli, Italy. When my master thesis was granted, I decided to continue graduate studies in Napoli, and in January 2005 I have received my Ph.D. in Computer Engineering.

During my free time, I love playing (and listening to) classical and Jazz piano. I also love photography, traveling, and practicing outdoor sports.

Research Interests

My research has been oriented to tackling key challenges in software engineering for ubiquitous systems. My current software-related research activities include:

• Methods and technologies for design, development, and deployment of software platforms for smart and highly-interoperable ubiquitous computing systems;
• System support for context-awareness and dependability;
• Programming languages and novel runtime platforms for mobile devices;

Professional Activities

Memberships and Appointments

• IEEE and IEEE Computer Society Member
• IEEE Technical Committees and Councils:
  • IEEE Technical Committee on Computer Languages
  • IEEE Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Computing
  • IEEE Technical Committee on Operating Systems Applications and Environments
  • IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering
• Steering and technical commitees:
  
  • PC member of the International Conference on Information Society (i-Society 2006), August 7 - 10, 2006, Miami, Florida, USA
  • Program Co-chair of the International Workshop on System Support for Future Mobile Computing Applications (FUMCA2006) in conjunction with the Eighth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2006), September 17th, 2006, Orange County, California, USA
  • PC member of the Common Models and Patterns for Pervasive Computing Workshop (CMPPC'07) at the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2007), May 13-16, 2007, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    
  • Program Co-chair of the First IEEE WoWMoM Workshop on Adaptive and DependAble Mission- and bUsiness-critical mobile Systems (ADAMUS 2007) in conjunction with the 8th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks. June 18th, 2007, Helsinki, Finland
  • PC member of the Middleware for Next-generation Converged Networks and Applications (MNCNA) workshop of the 8th International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2007), November 26, 2007, Newport Beach, California, USA
  • PC member of the 6th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2007), December 12-14, 2007, Oulu, Finland
  • PC member of the 16th International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Real-Time Systems (WPDRTS'08), in conjunction with the 22nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'08), April 14-18, 2008, Miami, Florida, USA
  • Program Co-chair of the Second IEEE WoWMoM Workshop on Adaptive and DependAble Mobile Ubiquitous Systems (ADAMUS 2008) in conjunction with the 9th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (IEEE WoWMoM 2008), 23-27 June 2008, Newport Beach, CA, USA
  • PC member of the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Services (ICPS 2008), July, 2008, Sorrento, Italy
• I am serving on the editorial board of Taylor & Francis' Journal of Location Based Services.

Reviewer

I am currently a reviewer for the ACM Computing Reviews service and for the IEEE Computer Society.

During the last 4 years I have also been acting as a reviewer for several international workshops and conferences, including the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), the ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA) and the IEEE International Symposium on Object-oriented Real-time distributed Computing (ISORC) .

Publications

International Book Editions

• C. di Flora and D. Cotroneo (eds.), Proc. International Workshop on System Support for Future Mobile Computing Applications (FUMCA 2006), IEEE Computer Society, Sept. 2006, ISBN: 0-7695-2729-9

International Journals and Magazines

• C. di Flora, D.Cotroneo, A. Graziano, and S. Russo, Securing services in nomadic computing environments, accepted for publication into Information and Software Technology, Elsevier (2007)
• A. Cilardo, D.Cotroneo, C. di Flora, A. Mazzeo, L. Romano, and S. Russo, A High Performance Solution for Providing Digital Time Stamping Services to Mobile Devices, Computer Systems Science and Engineering Journal, Vol.22 No.3, CRL Publishing, Leicester, UKD (2007)
  
• C. di Flora, Virtual Machines in a Nutshell, IEEE Software, Vol.24, No. 1, January-February 2007, pp. 93-94, IEEE Computer Society (2007)
• C. di Flora and D. Cotroneo, System Support for Future Mobile Computing Applications, IEEE Pervasive Computing, January-March 2007, IEEE Computer Society (2007)
  
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, and S. Russo, A Web-based Infrastructure for Building Service-oriented Applications, in Journal of Web Engineering, Vol.1 No.2, Rinton Press, pp. 128 - 146 (2003)
  

International Symposia, Conferences, and Workshops

• 2007
• C. Prehofer, J. Van Gurp, C. di Flora, Towards the Web as a Platform for Ubiquitous Applications in Smart Spaces, accepted for publication in IEEE Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Requirements and Solutions for Pervasive Software Infrastructures (RSPSI'07) in conjunction with the 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, September 16-19, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria
• S. Sathish, and C. di Flora, Supporting Smart Space Infrastructures: a Dynamic Context-model Composition Framework, accepted for publication in ACM Proceedings of the 3rd International Mobile Multimedia Communications Conference (MOBIMEDIA 2007), August 27-29, 2007, Nafpaktos, Greece
  
• C. di Flora, J. Van Gurp, and C. Prehofer, Towards Effective Smart Space Application Development: Impediments and Research Challenges, Common Models and Patterns for Pervasive Computing Workshop (CMPPC'07) at the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2007), May 13-16, 2007, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (.pdf)
  
• 2006
• C. di Flora, O. Riva, Contory: a Smart-Phone Middleware Supporting Multiple Context Provisioning Strategies, in Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Services and Infrastructure for the Ubiquitous and Mobile Internet (SIUMI2006), IEEE Computer Society, 4 July 2006, Liboa, Portugal
• C. di Flora, M. Ficco, and S. Russo, An Architecture for Providing Java Applications with Indoor and Outdoor Hybrid Location Sensing, in Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Software Technologies for Future Embedded & Ubiquitous Systems (SEUS 2006), IEEE Computer Society, April 27-28, 2006, Kolon Hotel, Gyeongju, Korea
• C. di Flora, O. Riva, S. Russo, and K. Raatikainen, Unearthing Design Patterns to Support Context-Awareness, in Proceedings of the Fourth Annual IEEE Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications and Workshops (PerCom 2006), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 383-387, 2006

• 2005
• C. di Flora, O. Riva, S. Russo, and K. Raatikainen, A Pattern-Oriented Approach to Enhance Context Infrastructures, in Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on Applications & the Internet Workshops (SAINT2005), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 174-177, 2005
• C. di Flora, M. Ficco, S. Russo, and V. Vecchio, Indoor and outdoor location based services for portable wireless devices, 25th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, 2005, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 244- 250, 6-10 June 2005
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, M. Ficco, and S. Russo, A Strategy for Application-transparent Integration of Nomadic Computing Domains, in Proceedings of the Workshop on Software Technologies for Future Embedded & Ubiquitous Systems (SEUS 2005), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 50-57, 2005
• C. di Flora, M. Cinque, D. Cotroneo, A. Migliaccio, and S. Russo, ESPERANTO: a Middleware Platform to Achieve Interoperability in Nomadic Computing Domains, in Proceedings of The 3rd ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA05), Cairo, Egypt, January 3-6, 2005, IEEE Computer Society, 2005

• 2004
• C. di Flora, O. Riva, S. Russo, and K. Raatikainen, Supporting Mobile Context-Aware Applications through a Modular Service Infrastructure, in Adjunct Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP 2004), September 7-10, 2004, Nottingham, England
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, G. Paolillo, and S. Russo, A Fault Tolerance Strategy For Real-Time Distributed Multimedia Applications, in Supplemental Volume of the 2004 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN04), Florence, Italy, 2004
• C. di Flora, M. Ficco, and S. Russo, Indoor Positioning for Location-aware applications on Java-based Mobile Devices, in Proceedings of 2nd Workshop on Java Technologies for Real-Time and Embedded Systems (JTRES 2004), On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2004: OTM 2004 Workshops, Springer-verlag LNCS, vol. 3292, pp. 383-393, 2004
• C. di Flora, M. Ficco, and S.Russo, Supporting Location-Aware Distributed Applications on Mobile Devices, in Proceedings of Workshop On State-of-the-art in Scientific Computing (PARA04), June, 20-23, 2004, - Lingby, Denmark, Springer-Verlag LNCS

• 2003
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, G. Paolillo, and S. Russo, Modeling and Detecting Failures in Next-generation Distributed Multimedia Applications, in Proceedings of the 22nd Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS2003), 6-8 October, 2003 - Florence, Italy, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 379-388, 2003
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, and S. Russo, Improving Dependability of Service Oriented Architectures for Pervasive Computing. In Proc. Of 8th IEEE International Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems (WORDS 2003), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 74-81, 2003
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, A. Mazzeo, L. Romano, S. Russo, and G. P. Saggese, Providing Digital Time Stamping Services to Mobile Devices, in Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems (WORDS 2003F), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 94-100, 2003

• 2002
• C. di Flora, D. Cotroneo, and S. Russo, A Jini Framework for Distributed Service Flexibility. In Proc. of 10th Euromicro Workshop on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based processing (PDP-2002), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 109-116, 2002

Intellectual Property

5 patent applications pending

Education

PhD in Computer Engineering, 2001-2005

"Federico II" University of Naples, Italy
-- Thesis: Service discovery and delivery in interoperable nomadic computing systems
-- Advisors: Stefano Russo (University of Naples, Italy) and Kimmo Raatikainen (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Laurea Degree (i.e. MSc) cum laude (with honours) in Computer Engineering, 1993-2001

"Federico II" University of Naples, Italy
-- Thesis: A Jini-based infrastructure for flexible and adaptive delivery of services
-- Advisors: Stefano Russo (University of Naples, Italy), Domenico Cotroneo(University of Naples, Italy), and Paddy Nixon (Strathclyde University of Glasgow, Scotland)