Paola Velardi

Velardi is also involved in scientific dissemination. In 2020 and 2021 she cooperated with RaiCultura, the cultural division of RAI, the national broadcasting company.

In September 2019 she was the local co-organizer and Program Chair of the 6th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing.

In November 2019 Velardi received the Standout Woman Award International at the seat of the Italian Parliament in Montecitorio.

According to Google Scholar bibliometrics updated until August 2018, Velardi's scientific publications have been cited more than 5472 times. Her h-index was 36. She has published more than 150 papers on international journals and conference proceedings. Some of her publications have been published in top rated journals such as Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics, Knowledge-Based Systems, IEEE Transactions (TDKE, PAMI, TOC, TSE), Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, and Journal of Web Semantics.

In December 2018, Velardi was included in the list of the 50 most influential Italian women in science and technology by Inspiring Fifty, a non-profit that aims to increase diversity in STEM by making female role models in tech more visible.

In March 2017, she was given an IBM Faculty Award for her research on social recommender systems.

Since 2013, she has been the coordinator of the Distance Learning Degree in Computer Science at Sapienza University.

Velardi aims at debunking the myth of computer science as a man-oriented and "inflexible" discipline. She is the founder of the project "NERD? Non e' roba per donne?" (translated from Italian: "NERD? Is it not stuff for women?"). This project was launched by Velardi in 2012 in the Department of Computer Science at Sapienza University. Since 2013 the project has been carried out in partnership with IBM Italy, which later created a spin-off of the project. The goal of the project is two-fold: (1) conveying computer science as creative, interdisciplinary and problem-solving oriented science, and (2) encouraging young female students in studying computer science by, for instance, developing apps for smartphones.

Since November 2001, Velardi has been a full professor in the department of computer science ("dipartimento di informatica" in Italian) at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy.

Velardi graduated in electronic engineering from Sapienza University in 1978. From 1978 to 1983, she worked for the Ugo Bordoni Foundation, a research institution focusing on ICT and working under the supervision of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. The aim of the foundation is to foster the research transfer from academia to practice in the domains of energy, health and mobility. In 1983, she was a visiting scholar at Stanford University. From 1984 to 1986, she came back to her natal city and worked as a researcher for IBM. From 1986 to 1996 she was an associate professor in the engineering faculty of Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy. Starting in November 1996, she taught in and did research for the department of computer science at the Sapienza University. Velardi was the head of Bachelor and Master Programs in Computer Science at Sapienza University from 2010 to 2013 and from 2015 to 2016.

Paola Velardi (born in Rome, April 26, 1955)is a full professor of computer science at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. Her research encompasses natural language processing, machine learning, business intelligence and semantic web, web information extraction in particular. Velardi is one of the hundred female scientists included in the database "100esperte.it" (translated from Italian with "100 female experts"). This online, open database champions the recognition of top-rated female scientists in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas.