Talk of Prof. Roberto Di Pietro





Roberto Di Pietro




”Drones’ Threats, Countermeasures, and Research Directions

Abstract

UAVs, or drones, are a dual-use technology that is experiencing an accelerated impact, with applications spanning from agriculture to warfare. In this talk we will survey some of the threats posed by drones, and will discuss some scientific contributions to the field aimed at providing a way to reduce the risk posed by a rogue use of this technology. We will also highlight some related research directions.






Biography

Roberto Di Pietro (Fellow, IEEE; Distinguished Scientist, ACM; Member Academia Europaea) is a Professor in Computer Science with the KAUST-CEMSE, KSA, and a Research Associate at the IIT since 2010. Previously, he was Professor in Cybersecurity and founder of the CRI-Lab at HBKU-CES, Doha-Qatar. He also served as Global Head for Security Research for Nokia Bell Labs. He has been working in the cybersecurity field for more than 25 years, leading technology-oriented and research-focused teams in the private sector, government, and academia (MoD, United Nations HQ, EUROJUST, IAEA, and WIPO).
His main research interests include AI driven cybersecurity, security and privacy for distributed systems (e.g. UAVs, Blockchain technology, Cloud, IoT, OSNs), applied cryptography, FinTech, Quantum Computing and data science. He has contributed a few scientific articles to the cited topics, co-authored four books, and registered tens of patents and patents applications. Other than being involved in M&A of start-ups —and having founded one (exited)—, he is on the Board of research centers and start-ups. In 2011-2012 he was awarded a Chair of Excellence from University Carlos III, Madrid. In 2020 he received the JeanClaude Laprie Award for having significantly influenced the theory and practice of Dependable Computing. In 2022 he was awarded the Individual Innovation Award from HBKU. He is consistently ranked among the 2% top world scientists since this ranking existed.
His education accounts for an M.S. in Computer Science ('94) and an M.S. in informatics ('03) both from UniPi, and a Specialization Diploma in Operations Research and Strategic Decisions ('03) and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science ('04), both from UniSapienza.