Fabio Rinaldi

Currently I am responsible for NLP research at IDSIA (Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence), in Lugano, Southern Switzerland. Until 2019 I was a lecturer and senior researcher at the University of Zurich, as well as PI in a number of research projects. I co-authored more than 100 scientific papers (including more than 40 journal papers), dealing with topics such as Ontologies, Entity Extraction, Answer Extraction, Text Classification, Document and Knowledge Management, Language Resources and Terminology.

I acquired and managed numerous projects, with funding from the European Union, the Swiss National Science Foundation (which funds basic research), InnoSuisse (a Swiss agency which funds applied research), large companies (in particular the Pharmaceutical Industry), and private research-funding foundations. The total funding which I acquired so far is more than 5 million Swiss Francs.

I have an academic background in computational sciences and more than 25 years experience in NLP research. In recent years my major focus of interest has been applications in the biomedical domain, such as automatic analysis of the scientific literature, of clinical reports, and health-related social media discussions.

See HERE

• Google Scholar page
• LinkedIn profile
• ResearchGate profile
• ORCID: 0000-0001-5718-5462
• ACL Anthology page
• DBLP page
• Publons ResearcherID: AAZ-8560-2021
• Semantic Scholar: 144386741
• Full CV
• Publications

I have numerous scientific collaborations, and I am always keen to establish new ones.

In 2024 I was instrumental in establishing a partnership between USI and the National Instute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan. This collaboration includes my research Institute, IDSIA.

During 2022-2023 I set up a partnership with the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER), Mexico, as part of a project funded by the Leading House for Latin America, St. Gallen, Switzerland.

I retain an affiliation with one of the most important Italian research Institutes (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Trento, Italy (for details see personal information below).

Nationally, I have a close collaboration with Prof. Michael Krauthammer, University of Zurich, and I retain an affiliation with his lab. In September 2024 we obtained together (and with Prof. J.L. Raisaro, CHUV), a major SNF project (M2P2) aimed at studying NLP applications for the health sector.

Finally, I have been an active member of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) for several years.

I enjoy traveling and experiencing different cultures. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Udine, in Italy, then spent two years as a student assistant at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), one of the major Italian research centers. Later I was a research assistant for three years at the former UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) in Manchester, UK.

After a few stable years at the University of Zurich (UZH), in 2010 I started traveling again. For nearly one year I was a visiting researcher at the former lab of Professor Jun'ichi Tsujii at Tokyo University, and I was again in Manchester for three months as a visiting researcher at National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM). In the US I visited for a couple of months the Lab of Professor Larry Hunter at Colorado University in Denver (now closed).

From 2016 to 2019 I had an additional appointment as a visiting research professor at the RegulonDB group at the National University of Mexico, visiting for about one month each year. RegulonDB is one of the major life sciences databases, well-known in the bioinformatics community, and funded by the US National Institute of Health (NIH). The visits were part of the activity on a joint project sponsored by the NIH.

Since 2017 I have resumed my connections with the FBK research Institute in Italy. As part of a joint project I was for two years part-time researcher, and since the end of that project I retain an affiliation as visiting fellow.

In total, I have worked as a researcher in Switzerland for more than 20 years, in Italy for about 4 years, in the UK for 3 years, in Japan for about 1 year, in Mexico for about 4 months, in Germany for 3 months, and in the US for 2 months.

Besides traveling in space, I also enjoy (virtual) time travel. My main personal interest, aside from NLP, is history. I read a lot about history, and whenever I visit a place my first goal is to understand in detail the history of that place. I firmly believe that the past has a lot to teach us.

My mother tongue is Italian. I am fluent in English, German, and Spanish.

English has been my main working language for more than 25 years.

I have spent 20 years in a German speaking town, and have also achieved a formal certification (the "Grosses Deutsches Sprachdiplom" by the Goethe Institute).

I have used Spanish for personal and professional reasons for more than 20 years.

I can read without much effort French and Portuguese, and (with some effort) also understand them when spoken.

Finally, I have a modest knowledge of spoken Japanese.

E-Mail: fabio AT idsia.ch
Tel: +41 (0)58 666 67 12

Postal address:

Dr. Fabio  Rinaldi

Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research /
Istituto Dalle Molle di studi sull’intelligenza artificiale (IDSIA)
IDSIA USI-SUPSI

Polo universitario Lugano - Campus Est
Via la Santa 1
CH-6962 Lugano - Viganello

NLP group page