Training at Unito and During Secondments
- Courses at Unito
– The Dept. of Law won for the second time funding dedicated to departments of excellence. The winning project, “Jurist of Tomorrow: New Skills for the Legal Professions and Empirical and Transdisciplinary Research,” provides training tracks specifically dedicated to post-docs, researchers and profs., aimed at promoting cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary research.
During the two years of the fellowship, I attended the following online courses:
1) Online course about Technology and Ethics by prof. Floridi, University of Bologna, useful to gain new ethics skills and knowledge.
2) Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python, at MIT on EDx
3) The Creator Accelerator:Brand and monetise your audience”; an Online 10 -week course to develop digital marketing, social media dissemination, and business skills with personalized mentorship by Chris Donnelly (ongoing)
Participating in this course is providing me with critical entrepreneurial and commercialization skills directly aligned with the exploitation strategy of my MSCA project. This intensive 10-week program focuses on dissemination, brand positioning, digital strategy, and monetization frameworks, all of which are essential for successfully launching and scaling a spinoff company based on DataCom research outputs.
Specifically, the course enhances my ability to:
- Define and articulate a compelling brand narrative for the spinoff, increasing visibility and credibility among stakeholders, potential customers, and investors.
- Define a social media strategy for the dissemination of the project results.
- Develop a go-to-market strategy grounded in data-driven digital marketing techniques, ensuring effective communication of the research-derived value proposition.
- Build a monetization model tailored to the scientific innovation emerging from the MSCA project, helping bridge the gap between lab results and market-ready solutions.
Understand startup financing and growth mechanics, equipping me with the tools to pitch, attract funding, and plan sustainable expansion.
This training is complementing the scientific and technical rigor of the MSCA project by embedding commercial acumen and market foresight into my professional development, thereby accelerating the translation of research into real-world impact via my startup spinoff.
I also exploited other free resources such as several books offered by the Unito library to develop my qualitative research methodology skills. The Unito library has an extensive catalogue which was essential for my research activities.
Unito also prepared me to become a tenured scholar by providing important training opportunities related to institutional roles:
2025 Vice chair of the Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Technical Committee at the IEEE CIS
2025 Member of the Ethical, Legal, Social, Environmental and Human Dimensions of AI Technical Committee at the IEEE CIS
2025 Member of the AI Ethics Oversight Working Group – P7999™ Series at the IEEE Standards Association
2024 Vice-Chair of the Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Technical Committee at the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
2024 Member of the GPAI Code of Practice Working Group, EU AI Office, European Commission
2024 Member of the doctoral committee of the thesis defense of Dr. Devika Medina Perez, University of Cadiz, Jerez Campus, Spain
2023 Multistakeholder Advisory Board member in the REALM Horizon project Grant Agreement no: 101095435