That Professor Monica Riva has been elected as a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Class IV: Natural Sciences) during the Award Ceremony held in Salzburg on March 8, 2025. The European Academy of Sciences and Arts (https://euro-acad.eu/) is committed to promoting scientific and societal progress. Founded in 1990, members are leading scientists, artists, and practitioners of governance, who are dedicated to innovative research, interdisciplinary and transnational collaboration as well as the exchange and dissemination of knowledge. L'articolo Monica Riva elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts proviene da DICA - Polimi.

Participation of M4D Team to CERIS Workshop on Missing Persons On the 19th of March 2025, the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) organised a thematic workshop on the issue of Missing Persons. The event was hosted by DG HOME in Brussels and brought together a wide range of participants across different disciplines ranging from social sciences and humanities to information technologies, including representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), research/academia, industry, law enforcement, as well as members of the public, to thoroughly address the prevention of and the challenges stemming from people going missing, exploring in parallel innovative solutions and relevant responses. The workshop started with a welcome speech by the Director, Innovation & Audit Directorate, DG HOME, and an invited speech by the President of the Police Network of Missing Persons (PEN-MP) who provided an overview of the pressing and multifaceted issue of missing persons cases. She underlined in particular the need for cross-border collaboration, highlighting in parallel the aims and objectives of PEN-MP, the European police network where police experts from over 34 EU and non-EU countries come together, sharing their expertise on investigations on missing persons cases. These introductory speeches were followed by the first panel of the workshop on “Missing persons: exploring the phenomenon, including trends and challenges”, where experts from DG Home, law enforcement agencies, NGOs and public authorities shared their views on the nature and scale of the phenomenon, the potential links to other relevant criminal activities (human trafficking, smuggling, domestic violence, child sexual exploitation, etc.), as well as existing processes and methodologies in missing persons investigations. The second panel of the workshop on “Technology and methodologies in the search for missing persons and the role of research and innovation” provided an overview of the current methodologies, AI-powered tools and technologies, along with their innovative role in modern missing persons investigations, highlighting also the legal and ethical challenges associated with such tools, along with the necessary safeguards to prevent any type of discrimination. Finally, the third panel on “The role of NGOs and the public in the search for missing persons” highlighted the critical role of NGOs in addressing missing persons cases, identifying in parallel the risk indicators as well as the barriers that have to be addressed for a well-rounded prevention. In between these panels, demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies developed in four different EU-funded projects (HORIZON Europe projects VANGUARD and HEROES, ISF project CESAGRAM, and Amber Alert’s International Cold Cases Analysis project) took place, showcasing AI-driven tools and methodologies that can be utilised to support missing persons investigations.   The main key-takeaways of this CERIS workshop have been the need to support knowledge sharing, best practice exchanges, and a collaboration platform among stakeholders on this field, to explore technological advancements in addressing missing persons cases, as well as to further invest in social research and common databases to enhance prevention, search, and investigation efforts, not only across Europe, but also worldwide. The M4D group of the MKLab at CERTH/ITI successfully participated in this event, actively contributing to the second panel of the workshop on the technological advancements in missing persons’ investigations, providing insights on the legal and ethical implications on the development of relevant AI tools, as well as on the need to infuse social research findings in technological developments, ensuring in parallel further enhancement of the existing intelligence picture in the field, as well as building a common understanding and awareness on the phenomenon. Moreover, M4D researchers demonstrated the AI-based tools developed in the CESAGRAM project where M4D participated as Work Package leader, as well as the AI-based tools being developed in the VANGUARD project, coordinated by M4D, highlighting their role for supporting investigations, improving decision making, as well as providing actionable intelligence through multimodal data fusion, correlation, pattern recognition, predictive analytics, and risk assessment.

Μ4D Group participated in The Video Retrieval Competition 2024, with the VERGE system, an interactive video content retrieval system designed for browsing a collection of images extracted from videos and conducting targeted content searches. VERGE incorporates a variety of retrieval methods and fusion techniques. It also offers a user-friendly web application for query formulation and displaying top results. VBS is an international video content search competition that evaluates the state-of-the-art of interactive video retrieval systems. It is performed annually as a special session at the International Conference on MultiMedia Modeling (MMM) since 2012. The competition aims to push research on large-scale video retrieval systems that are effective, fast, and easy to use for content search scenarios that are truly relevant in practice (e.g., known-item search in an ever-increasing video archive, as nowadays ubiquitous in many domains of our digital world). Οur team ranked 5th in the Novice Session, 8th in the Expert Session and 7th overall among 16 participating teams. You can read the Paper and visit the official website for more information. Pic.1. M4D Team During the Competition

Nikolas Galli e Gabriele Beretta have been selected by Politecnico di Milano to participate in the prestigious ETA – European Talent Academy program. This year’s call offers early-career researchers at TUM, Imperial College London, and PoliMi working in the fields of water and food for healthy, resilient societies the chance to connect and collaborate across disciplines. L'articolo Nikolas Galli e Gabriele Beretta have been selected by Politecnico di Milano to participate in the prestigious ETA – European Talent Academy. proviene da DICA - Polimi.

The submission deadline for the Special Issue on “Image Processing and Computer Vision Sensing Technologies in Engineering Applications and Digital Twins” has been extended until the 30th of June 2025!   Click for more information.

Professor Fabio Biondini, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the inaugural recipient of the ASCE Dan M. Frangopol Medal for Life-Cycle Engineering of Civil Structures. Officially established by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2023 to honor Professor Dan Frangopol, this medal is a recognition for those who have made outstanding contributions in life-cycle engineering, in aspects such as design, assessment, inspection, maintenance, and cost optimization of civil structures and infrastructure systems. The award is made biennially and is given for the first time in 2025 to Professor Fabio Biondini with the following motivation: “For distinguished achievements in the broad area of life-cycle engineering of civil structures and infrastructure systems and outstanding contributions to life-cycle of bridges and bridge networks“ The ASCE Frangopol Medal will be presented to Professor Fabio Biondini at the Award Ceremony of the ASCE/SEI Structures Congress in Phoenix, Arizona, April 11, 2025. For more information: > > ASCE: > > > > https://www.asce.org/career-growth/awards-and-honors/dan-m-frangopol-medal-for-life-cycle-engineering-in-civil-structures > > > > Lehigh University: > > > > https://engineering.lehigh.edu/news/article/asce-establishes-dan-m-frangopol-medal-life-cycle-engineering-civil-structures L'articolo Inaugural ASCE Dan M. Frangopol Medal for Life-Cycle Engineering of Civil Structures proviene da DICA - Polimi.

MaaSAI project, coordinated by M4D Group, aims to revolutionise manufacturing and remanufacturing processes by facilitating access to flexible and decentralised capacities, through the Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) business model, that extends the principles of the service-oriented economy to the manufacturing industry. MaaSAI aims to reduce the heavy investments that manufacturers have traditionally had to make to set up and maintain their operations. With an emphasis on production flexibility, agility and responsiveness, the MaaSAI project enables on-demand manufacturing, reducing waste and optimising resource utilisation, facilitating the transition towards more sustainable and circular facilities, and promoting better integration of the value chain. The MaaSAI project leverages Explainable Artificial Intelligence (xAI) in autonomous agents to negotiate the use of manufacturing capacities between providers and consumers in a dynamic MaaS ecosystem. The incorporation of secure and real-time data exchange between participating companies ensures fast response times and improves collaboration. The kick-off meeting of the MaaSAI project took place on 18 & 19 of December 2024, at the facilities of CERTH. MaaSAI Consortium at CERTH Premices

Chiara Recalcati has been awarded the Prix de la Faculté des Geosciences et de l’Environnement (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland) for outstanding PhD Thesis (PhD Thesis: Stochastic characterization of reactive processes in porous media). Chiara has just completed her Double PhD path obtaining a PhD in Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (Politecnico di Milano) and a PhD in Earth Sciences (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland). Laudatio: In recognition of her seminal and synergistic experimental and theoretical studies leading to quantitative understanding of nano-scale patterns of heterogeneous geochemical reactions taking place at mineral-fluid interfaces and driving chemical weathering of the Earth interior. The prize has been awarded during the official ceremony in Lausanne on December 06, 2024. L'articolo Chiara Recalcati has been awarded the Prix de la Faculté des Geosciences et de l’Environnement proviene da DICA - Polimi.

On November 8, at the United Nations, the team composed of Maria Cristina Rulli (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) and Paolo D’Odorico (University of California, Berkeley, USA) was awarded the prestigious Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW). The award was granted with the following motivation: “They spearheaded novel analyzes of the water-energy-food nexus, describing how numerous, complex factors interact, providing managers and policymakers better ways to be stewards of freshwater in a changing, globalized world.” This award celebrates the researchers’ innovative contribution to the analysis of the water-energy-food nexus, providing valuable tools for sustainable water resource management in a transforming world. L'articolo Maria Cristina Rulli receives the ‘Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water’ proviene da DICA - Polimi.