University of Verona (UNIVR)

The University of Verona (UNIVR) was founded in 1982 and is organized in 15 Departments offering a total of 61 degree courses, 4 graduate schools, 29 master courses, 42 specialization schools and 34 master classes. The SCAN4Reco project will be developed by the Department of Computer Science. This Department was established in 2001, it employs an academic staff of 54 people, and counts on 28 PhD students, 42 post doc fellows and 30 research assistants. The research and teaching activities performed in the Department represent a continuous of competences from mathematics, through computer science and computer engineering, up to physics, and cover themes that are strictly related to the SCAN4Reco project, as Applied Physics to Cultural Heritage, Mathematical Modelling, Machine Intelligence, Computer Graphics and other topics. The leadership of the Department in applied research and the impact on the surrounding area are confirmed by a 3 ML € annual budget attracted by competitive R&D projects and technology transfers. With respect to the FP7 period (2007-2013) it has participated in 16 research project funded by European Commission (5.2 ML €), and in a total of 26 international and national research projects (7.7 ML €). Finalized research activities have led to 5 spin-offs, 10 patents, and 253 grants with companies (4.8 ML €). The Department has produced in the period about 2000 scientific publications.

The work within the SCAN4Reco project will be carried out by the Vision, Image Processing, and Sound (VIPS) Laboratory, and by the Optical Devices and Advanced Techniques (OPIFICIOATe) Laboratory, both hosted by the Department of Computer Science.

The VIPS laboratory staff is currently composed by 7 professors, 5 research fellows, and 8 Ph.D. students. The research envisaged at the VIPS laboratory covers a broad spectrum of issues related to Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Image Processing, and Sound Synthesis & Processing. The activity of the staff in the last decade is documented by more than 500 publications (more than 200 on International journals) with more than 5K citations. The exploitation of the technologies developed by the group has led to the creation of 2 spin-off companies and many industrial collaborations and funded research projects.

The OPIFICIOATe laboratory of physics has been recently founded and it is currently composed by 3 professors and 1 research fellow. The research focuses on the development of optical devices and advanced techniques based on coherent optics, infrared imaging, and multispectral techniques. Applications to Cultural Heritage and implementation of portable systems for non-destructive analysis of artworks’ surface and materials are among the primary activities. The researchers involved have notable experience in the interdisciplinary field of Cultural Heritage through international networking, and the novel techniques developed by the group have led to active partnership with institutions of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, e.g. the pioneering Thermal Quasi-Reflectography currently applied to the exceptional diagnostics of “Monocromo” by Leonardo on occasion of the Italian Expo 2015.

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