Pattern Recognition and Applications Lab - PRA LAB
The Pattern Recognition and Applications (PRA) Laboratory was founded in 1996. The PRA Lab has been active for almost 30 years at the University of Cagliari.
PRA Lab's mission is to address fundamental issues for the development of future pattern recognition systems in the context of real applications, focused on creating secure systems for security applications, as reflected by the motto:
There is nothing more practical than a good theory (Kurt Lewin).
PRA Lab team has provided pioneering contributions in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning security, being the first to demonstrate gradient-based evasion (also known as adversarial examples) and poisoning attacks, and how to mitigate them, playing a leading role in the establishment and advancement of this research field.
PRA Lab activities can be categorized into four highly interdependent lines:
- development of theories to solve problems of fundamental research, including multiple classifier systems (our original expertise) and adversarial machine learning;
- application of these theories to solve practical problems, in the research domains of AI security, cybersecurity, biometrics, computer vision for video surveillance and ambient intelligence document and multimedia categorization;
- testing and validation of the proposed solutions on real-world data (in-vivo experiments);
- development of prototypes anddemonstrators, through which the results of basic research are translated into functional products.
PRA Lab team, led by the lab director prof. Fabio Roli, consists of 2 full professors (prof. Giorgio Giacinto, prof. Battista Biggio) and 3 associate professors (prof. Luca Didaci, prof. Giorgio Fumera, prof. Gian Luca Marcialis), 9 assistant professors (Dr. Ambra Demontis, Dr. Roberto Casula, Dr. Davide Maiorca, Dr. Marco Micheletto, Dr. Giulia Orrú, Dr. Maura Pintor, Dr. Lorenzo Putzu, Dr. Leonardo Regano, Dr. Angelo Sotgiu), and more than 25 post-doctoral researchers , phd students and research associates.
PRA Lab Highlights. A non-exhaustive timeline
1996
Foundation
PRA Lab was founded in 1996 at the University of Cagliari
1996
2000
First workshop on MCS
First (of 12 editions) International Workshop on Multiple Classifier Systems in Cagliari. Beginning of PRA Lab research leadership in ensemble machine learning
2004
First IAPR Fellowship to a PRA Lab Member
Professor Fabio Roli, lab founder and director, is elevated to the grade of Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition
2004
2012
First BTIA Cybersecurity Summer School
First (of 5) edition of the summer school on Cybersecurity for PhD students and researchers, "Building Trust in the Information Age - BTIA”
2018
Impact of Wild Patterns
Publication of "Wild patterns: Ten years after the rise of adversarial machine learning" (*), a detailed review of the evolution of Adversarial Machine Learning (Awarded with the “Pattern Recognition Medal” in 2020)
2018
2018
Birth of "Cybersecurity & AI" MSc Course
PRA Lab members give an important contribution to the birth and design of the MSc Course on "Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence", in which several members of the Lab currently teach
2020
Pierre Devijver Award
A member of PRA Lab, Professor Fabio Roli, is awarded the Pierre Devijver Award for his seminal contributions to Ensemble Learning and Multiple Classifier Systems
2020
2020
Second IAPR Fellowship to a PRA Lab Member
Professor Giorgio Giacinto, Cybersecurity research director, is elevated to the grade of Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition
2021
UniCA teams wins the Cyber Challenge
University of Cagliari team, leaded by PRA Lab members, wins the Italian Cyber Challenge
2021
2022
2022 ICML Test-of-Time Award
The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) has awarded a member of PRA Lab, professor Battista Biggio, with the prestigious "Test of Time Award" for the paper "Poisoning Attacks against Support Vector Machines" (**).
2022
Google 2022 Security and Privacy Research Award
This prize, sponsored by the Security, Anti-abuse, and Privacy teams at Google, was awarded to a member of the PRA Lab, prof. Battista Biggio and his collaborators, for their research achievements in adversarial machine learning.
2022
2024
sAIfer Lab
The PRA Lab and the Smartlab, University of Genoa, join forces and create the sAIfer Lab.
*B. Biggio and F. Roli. Wild Patterns: Ten Years After the Rise of Adversarial Machine Learning. Pattern Recognition, 84:317-331, 2018.
** B. Biggio, B. Nelson, and P. Laskov. Poisoning attacks against support vector machines. In J. Langford and J. Pineau, editors, 29th Int’l Conf. on Machine Learning, 1807-1814. Omnipress, 2012.
LAB DIRECTOR
Fabio Roli - Full Professor
RESEARCH DIRECTORS
Battista Biggio - Full Professor
Giorgio Fumera - Associate Professor
Giorgio Giacinto - Full Professor
Davide Maiorca - Associate Professor
Gian Luca Marcialis - Associate Professor
FACULTY MEMBERS
Fabio Brau - Assistant Professor
Ambra Demontis - Assistant Professor
Luca Didaci - Associate Professor
Roberto Casula - Assistant Professor
Marco Micheletto - Assistant Professor
Giulia Orrù - Assistant Professor
Maura Pintor - Assistant Professor
Lorenzo Putzu - Assistant Professor
Leonardo Regano - Assistant Professor
Angelo Sotgiu - Assistant Professor
POSTDOCS
Rita Delussu
Wei Guo
PhD STUDENTS
Daniele Angioni
Aurora Arrus
Simone Carta
Sara Concas
Chen Dang
Nicola Deidda
Hicham Eddoubi
Giuseppe Floris
Jie Gao
Daniele Ghiani
Davide Ghiani
Srishti Gupta
Simone Maurizio La Cava
Luca Minnei
Raffaele Mura
Emanuele Ledda
Andrea Panzino
Gianpaolo Perelli
Giorgio Piras
Lorenzo Pisu
Jefferson Rodriguez
Alessandro Sanna
Silvia Lucia Sanna
Christian Scano
Luca Scionis
Diego Soi
Affan Younas
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Pierangelo Loi - Technologist
Emmanuele Massidda
Matteo Mauri - Communication Manager
PRA LAB
Department of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering (DIEE)
University of Cagliari
Position papers
AI Security and Safety: the PRA Lab Research Experience
Demontis, A.; Pintor, M.; Demetrio, L.; Sotgiu, A.; Angioni, D.; Piras, G.; Gupta, S.; Biggio, B.; Roli, F. - 3486:(2023), pp. 324-328. Proceedings of the Ital-IA 2023: 3rd National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Pisa, Italy.
Cybersecurity and AI: the PRA Lab Research Experience
Pintor, M.; Orrú G.; Maiorca D.; Demontis A.; Demetrio, L.; Marcialis G.L.; Biggio, B.; Roli, F. - 3486:(2023), pp. 426-431. Proceedings of the Ital-IA 2023: 3rd National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Pisa, Italy.
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LOCATION
Via Marengo, 3 - 09123, Cagliari - Italy
