Latest Academic Works
Ecological modelling of the phytoplankton community in the northern Adriatic sea
This dissertation examines the ecological dynamics of phytoplankton communities in the northern Adriatic Sea, focusing on phenology, environmental drivers, and trophodynamics. The complexity of the region, characterized by the richness of phytoplankton communities, environmental variability and intensive human activities, is not seen as an obstacle but as an opportunity to …
Explainable machine learning techniques for applications in life sciences
As ecological, agricultural, and biological disciplines face mounting challenges like biodiversity loss, food chain disruption, and climate change, leveraging machine learning (ML) to process complex and heterogeneous data becomes increasingly vital. This dissertation explores the potential of ML in combination with explainability approaches for enhancing research in life sciences, specifically …
Diversity, ecology and sensing of the toxic diatom Pseudo-Nitzschia in the Gulf of Trieste: doctoral disertation
This work focuses on a group of diatoms, belonging to the genus Pseudo-nitzschia, which is a globally important phytoplankton genus. Some species of the genus produce the toxin domoic acid, which is responsible for shellfish intoxication known as the amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP). These diatoms have few morphological features that …
Parameter Identification in Nonlinear Dynamic Systems with Meta-heuristic Approaches
The task of mathematical modeling of dynamic systems from observed system behavior, widely known under the name of system identification, breaks down into two subtasks. The first task, referred to as structure identification, is to specify the model structure, i.e., the functional form of the model. In practice, the model …