Alessandra MELONIO

Main research topics

The research activity carried on by Alessandra Melonio is mainly in the context of HCI focusing on Interaction design and Physical Computing. Her research work aims to design interactive tangible solutions with and for the intended users, especially children and teens, in different learning contexts. She co-authored more than 60 international peer-reviewed publications in the area of human-computer interaction and technology-enhanced learning (e.g., ACM CHI, TEI, International Journal of Human Computer Studies). Melonio is part of the organising committee of international conferences in the area of HCI and TEL, acting as co-(chair) or associate chair (e.g., CHI, MobileHCI, CSCW, INTERACT, MIS4TEL). She is regularly part of review panels of top ACM conferences and journals.

Current position

Associate Professor, Academic Discipline (AD) INF/01,
Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venezia, Italy

Past positions

2021- 2024 : Assistant Professor (Tenure Track RTDB), Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venezia, Italy

Aug 2018 - Oct 2021. Researcher with a fixed-term contract at the Smart Data Fac- tory technology transfer laboratory of Faculty of Computer Science at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, working on the topics: capacity building and projects’ acquisition and management with national and international companies at the Smart Data Factory technology transfer lab.

Jan 2016 – Jun 2018 Research Assistant at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, working on the topics: human centred computing; interaction design and gamified smart solutions; physical computing and IoT.

Feb 2012 – Jan 2013 Research Assistant at the Faculty of Computer Science of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, working on the topic: Visual di- agrammatic representation for temporal relations in stories (Project DARE, financed by the BZ province); requirements and guidelines for designing game for deaf children (FP7 TERENCE project).

Education Educational qualifications

Feb 2013 – Jul 2016 Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Faculty of Computer Science of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Title of the thesis: Participatory Game Design and Children. Advisor: Prof. Gabriella Dodero Co-Advisor: Dr. Rosella Gennari Ph.D. Cycle: XXVIII Final Mark: Excellent Dissertation 29 July 2016

Jan 2011 Master Degree in Computer Science and Automation Engineering with full honors at the department of Information Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics University of L’Aquila, Italy. Title of the thesis: “Interazione naturale con dispositivi di nuova generazione”. Supervisor: Prof. Laura Tarantino (University of L’Aquila). Final Mark: 110/110

Collaboration

National collaborations: Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Smart Data Factory, The Laboratory for technology transfer of the Faculty of Computer Science (UNIBZ), Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMEC) of the University of Trento (UniTN), Politecnic of Milan, University of L’Aquila

International collaborations: Technical University of Denmark, University of Oulu (Finland), University of Science and Technology (NTNU) di Trondheim, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Salsburg, Center for Education Research Partnerships (CERP), Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and National Tech- nical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Editorial activities

- Associate Editor and Member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Child Computer Interaction. Elsevier. Ranking scimago: Q1.

- Lead Guest Editor for the Special Issue number 1224 - New Frontiers in Multimedia-based and Multimodal HCI in the Journal Multimedia Tools and Applications. Ranking Scimago: Q1.

- Workshop Resisto co-located within Mis4TEL conference. Re- flections and Dialogues around Smart Technology (Resisto), L’Aquila, 13 July 2022

- Workshop PALX co-located within CHITALY conference. PALX Player and learner experience Can we design for both? Rome, 2015

Awards and affiliations to scientific associations

-  ACM — Association for Computing Machinery Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession - Winner of the award “Best Idea for Digital Innovation of Manufacturing Company of the Trentino Alto Adige territory” from the FablabNET Digital Transformation Camp, in a group of 4 out of 30 participants. The camp was organised by FablabNET Interred Central Europe, in October 2017. The prize consists of 6 months of an incubation programme.
-  Winner of the award “Best PHD student 2016” from the Free University of Bozen- Bolzano for the best phd student 2016 in Computer Science in February 2017. The award was assigned by a Committee made up of professors of the PhD. course in Computer Science.
-  Winner of a PH.D. Scholarship in November 2012. The scholarship has been granted to finance a period of three year as a Ph.D. student. Alessandra Melonio won one out of eight scholarships. - Winner of a contract as Lab teacher for the year 2011/2012 for the course “Seminar in Human Machine interaction” for the master degree in Computer Science at the Free university of BozenBolzano.
-  Winner of a grant for research of 6 months for working on the European Fp7 Project Terence, at University of L’Aquila.
-  Winner of Best Conference Paper of the International Conference “itAIS 2011 - Infor- mation Systems: a crossroads for Organization, Management, Accounting and Engineer- ing”, Rome, Italy, October 7-8 2011: A. Melonio, L. Tarantino, and T. Di Mascio. Towards ICT support for elderly displaced people: looking for natural gestures. In proceedings of the 8th Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS conference (ITAIS 2011, Rome). Springer, 135-143.

Main journal and international conference articles

Scopus profile: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=55321661600 (55 publications, 416 citations, H-index 13)

Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qUA7Eg4AAAAJ&hl=it&oi=ao (61 publications, 756 citations, H-index 16)