Riccardo Zecchina
Riccardo Zecchina (born May 6, 1963 ) is an Italian theoretical physicist and computer scientist.
Zecchina graduated from the Polytechnic in Turin with a Laureate degree in 1988 and received his doctorate in 1993 from the University of Turin. Since 1997 he has been employed in the solid state physics group at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste , where he headed the Statistical Physics and Interdisciplinary Applications group from 2001, and has been a professor at the Turin Polytechnic since 2007 .
First in 2007 and later several times, he was a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research (at headquarters in Redmond and in England). In 2001/02 and 2003/04 he was a visiting researcher at the CNRS at the University of Paris-South.
He deals with statistical physics (complex and disordered systems, packing of spheres), neuroinformatics and neurosciences, bioinformatics (protein structure, genetics), inverse dynamic problems, optimization problems (stochastic optimization, distributed algorithms, constraint satisfaction), information theory, machine learning and game theory models of agents -Interaction. He is particularly concerned with the application of methods of statistical physics to algorithms, including the development of distributed algorithms for large optimization problems. Most recently he has been particularly interested in probabilistic sampling techniques and message passing algorithms.
In 2011 he received an ERC Advanced Grant for Optimization and inference algorithms from the theory of disordered systems . In 2016 he received the Lars Onsager Prize for groundbreaking work on the application of ideas from the theory of spin glasses to computational problems, which led to both new classes of efficient algorithms and new perspectives in the structure and complexity of phase transitions .
He heads the Statistical Inference Group of the Human Genetics Foundation and is a fellow of the Collegio Carlo Alberto.
He is married and has four kids.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Lars Onsager Prize, 2016, APS
- ↑ Official laudation: For Groundbreaking work applying spin glass ideas to ensembles of computational problems, yielding both new classes of efficient algorithms and new perspectives on phase transition in their structure and complexity.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Zecchina, Riccardo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 6, 1963 |