CV

Education

• Postdoctoral Researcher: University of Cagliari, 1st November 2024 - ongoing
• Ph.D in Artificial Intelligence, University of Rome La Sapienza / University of Cagliari, 24th January 2025
  • Visiting Student: Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany. Supervisor: Prof. Christian Wressnegger.
  • Thesis: Adversarial Pruning: Improving Evaluations and Methods. Supervisor: Prof. Battista Biggio
• M.S. in Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity, University of Cagliari, 27th July 2021, (110/110 cum laude)
  • Thesis: On Explainability of Machine Learning DGA Detectors from DNS Traffic Data (see related paper). Supervisor: Prof. Battista Biggio
• B.S. in Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Cagliari, 25th July 2019, (110/110)
  • Thesis: Utilizzabilità di Tecniche Affidabilistiche per la Manutenzione Predittiva di Stazioni Radio Base. Supervisor: Prof. Elio Usai

Work experience

• 06/2023 - 07/2023: Consultant
  • Smeralda Computing & Ass. S.r.l., Sassari, Italy
  • Project Report: the state of the Italian cyberSecurity infrastructure.
• 06/2024 - 07/2024: Consultant
  • Smeralda Computing & Ass. S.r.l., Sassari, Italy
  • Project Report: “Kentos” of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia
• 03/2023 - 06/2023: Newspaper
  • L’Unione Sarda, Cagliari, Italy
  • Magazine articles on AI security for local newspaper
• 03/2024 - 06/2024: Newspaper
  • L’Unione Sarda, Cagliari, Italy
  • Magazine articles on AI ethics for local newspaper

Projects

• Participation, with the University of Cagliari, in the EU project ``Security for AI and AI for Security’’ (Sec4AI4Sec), Grant Agreement no.: 101120393, funded by the European Union in the programme HORIZON-CL3-2022-CS-01

Publications

HO-FMN: Hyperparameter Optimization for Fast Minimum-Norm Attacks

Mura, R., Floris, G., Scionis, L., Piras, G., Pintor, M., Demontis, A., Giacinto, G., & Biggio, B. (2025). "HO-FMN: Hyperparameter Optimization for Fast Minimum-Norm Attacks." Neurocomputing, 616, 128918.

On the Robustness of Adversarial Training Against Uncertainty Attacks

Ledda, E., Scodeller, G., Angioni, D., Piras, G., Cinà, A. E., Fumera, G., Biggio, B., & Roli, F. (2024). "On the Robustness of Adversarial Training Against Uncertainty Attacks." arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.21952.

Adversarial Pruning: A Survey and Benchmark of Pruning Methods for Adversarial Robustness

Piras, G., Pintor, M., Demontis, A., Biggio, B., Giacinto, G., & Roli, F. (2024). "Adversarial Pruning: A Survey and Benchmark of Pruning Methods for Adversarial Robustness."

Adversarial Attacks Against Uncertainty Quantification

Ledda, E., Angioni, D., Piras, G., Fumera, G., Biggio, B., & Roli, F. (2023). "Adversarial Attacks Against Uncertainty Quantification." Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision.

Samples on Thin Ice: Re-Evaluating Adversarial Pruning of Neural Networks

Piras, G., Pintor, M., Demontis, A., & Biggio, B. (2023). "Samples on Thin Ice: Re-Evaluating Adversarial Pruning of Neural Networks." 2023 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC).

Improving Fast Minimum-Norm Attacks with Hyperparameter Optimization

Floris, G., Mura, R., Scionis, L., Piras, G., Pintor, M., Demontis, A., & Biggio, B. (2023). "Improving Fast Minimum-Norm Attacks with Hyperparameter Optimization." arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.08177.

Explaining Machine Learning DGA Detectors from DNS Traffic Data

Piras, G., Pintor, M., Demetrio, L., & Biggio, B. (2022). "Explaining Machine Learning DGA Detectors from DNS Traffic Data." CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 3260, 150-168.

Other Activities

Conference and Workshop Chair

• 02/2025: Workshop co-chair at ITASEC25, for the Trustworthy AI for CyberSecurity Workshop (TAIC25)

Reviewer

Journals

• Pattern Recognition Journal

Conferences and Workshops

• 07/2024: PC at the 17th ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security (AISec 2024), co-located with ACM CCS
• 06/2024: PC at the Statistical Techniques in Pattern Recognition and Structural and Syntactic Pattern Recognition S+SSPR Workshop
• 07/2023: PC at the 16th ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security (AISec 2023), co-located with ACM CCS
• 06/2023: PC at the 31st European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning
• 05/2022: PC at the ITASEC22 Workshop on AI for Security and Security of AI

Tutoring

• 10/2023 - ongoing : Academic Tutor
  • University of Cagliari (Italy)
  • Tutor for the Industrial Software Development Course.

Talks and Conferences

• 06/2022: Italian Conference on Cybersecurity ITASEC 22, Rome, Italy
• 07/2022: International Computer Vision Summer School (ICVSS22), Scicli, Italy
• 09/2022: Summer School for the PhD students of the National PhD in AI, Rome, Italy
• 10/2023: 31st European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning, Bruges, Belgium