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Alfredo Ferro

Emeritus Professor of INFORMATICS [INF/01]
Contacts

Office: Città Universitaria - viale Andrea Doria, 6 - c/o Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica
Email: ferro@dmi.unict.it - alfredoferro@gmail.com
Phone: +39 095.738.3071
Fax: +39 095.330.094
Web Site: www.dmi.unict.it/~ferro/

Alfredo Ferro was born in Ramacca (Catania) on May 10,1951.
He received his bachelor in Mathematics in Catania in 1973 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University in 1981.
His Ph.D dissertation  Decision procedures for some classes of unquantified set-theoretic formulae. Advisor Jacob T. Schwartz, received the Jay Krakauer Award for the best dissertation in the field of Science at NYU in the academic year 1980/81.
He is Full Professor of Computer Science  in Catania since 1990. He has been the principal promoter and founder of the Computer Science undergraduate/graduate Program in Computer Science. He has been the first director of undergraduate and graduate studies taeching courses in Data Base, Data Mining and Bioinformatics. Presently he is a member of the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine has been the co-founder of a graduate program in Biology, Human Genetics and Bioinformatics, director of graduate studies in Clinical Molecular and Computational Pathology.and he is presently director of graduate studies in Molecular Biomedicine.
He has been director since 26 years ago of the prestigious J.T.Schwartz International School for Scientific Research in Lipari  and has been  co-director of Lipari International Summer School on BioInformatics and Computational Biology. 
Ferro has coordinated the three years International Project INT01AB7BE among University of Catania, New York University and Columbia University. His present research area includes Database,DataMining and Algorithms with applications to Bioinformatics and Networking.
in particular his research group has been mainly working on Computational RNAi and Network Biology. In particular microRNA targeting, A-to-I editing and circulating microRNA have been investigated. Both endogenous and artificial RNA-based therapy for biomedical applications are among the main subject of his research (in collaboration with Prof.Carlo Croce, Columbus,OH, Prof. Charles Lawrence, Brown University and Prof.Dennis Shasha New York University).
As for computational Network Biology his group has produced algorithms and software for efficient exact and approximate subgraph searching in large Networks or in large Database of Networks (In collaboration with Prof.Dennis Shasha ,Prof.Roded Sharan, Tel Aviv University, Prof Gary Bader, University of Toronto).
Some of the software produced by his group can be found at http://ferrolab.dmi.unict.it/

VIEW THE PUBLICATIONS
N.B. the number of publications can affect the loading time of the information
VIEW THE COURSES FROM THE A.Y. 2022/2023 TO THE PRESENT

Academic Year 2020/2021

Academic Year 2019/2020

Academic Year 2018/2019

Academic Year 2017/2018

Academic Year 2016/2017

Academic Year 2015/2016

Alfredo Ferro has been leading an active research group in bioinformatics and datamining with particular emphasis on biomedical applications. In the most recent years his research activity has been focused on non-coding RNA computational analysis and biological networks and their biomedical applications. among the most relevant results we point out an algorithm to design synthetic microRNA with applications to cancer therapy validated in Prof.Croce Lab. the design of a multiple network alignment with application to proteomics. ncRNA biomarkers for several cancer classes have been discovered.
Very popular data and knowledge bases for ncRNA including circulating RNA , a-to-I editing events and their connections to pathologies have been implemented.
Several open source plug-in for important  platforms such as Cytoscape (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) have been implemented. research activity has been conducted in close and continuous collaboration with prof Carlo Croce lab (Ohio State University) and Prof.Dennis Shasha (New York University). An intense collaboration has been established with Prof. Charles E. Lawrence (Brown University); Prof. Roded Sharan  (Tel Aviv University) and  Prof. Gary Bader (Toronto University).

Every year Alfredo Ferro is a short-term visiting researcher at  New York University and Ohio State University. 

KEYWORDS:
DATA MINING -  BIOINFORMATICS - BIOLOGICAL NETWORKS -  NON CODING RNA -  MICRORNA -  BIOMEDICAL DATA ANALYSIS -  DYNAMICAL DATA ANALYSIS -  GRAPH MINING -  PROBABILISTIC ALGORITHMS -  MACHINE LEARNING -  DRUG TARGET INTERACTION PREDICTION-  DRUG COMBINATION DSEIGN AND NANOSPHERES -  SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY - BIOLOGICAL PATHWAY ANALYSIS -  RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS

 

Director since 1989 of the prestigious J.T.Schwartz International school for Scientific Research,  internationally known as “Lipari School”.
All the previous editions can be found at http://lipari.cs.unict.it/LipariSchool/Bio/?q=node/34

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