2012 - 2015: Master in Linguistics at DISLL, University of Padova, Italy. Master thesis: Generating Meaning Representations for Compound Words: A new Perspective from Compositional Distributional Semantics. Supervisors: Marco Marelli (CIMeC, Unitn), Laura Vanelli (DISLL, Unipd). Grade: 110/110 cum laude.
Teaching
Sep-Oct 2024: Coordinator and lecturer of MSc BCS Higher Cognitive Functions course, University of Amsterdam.
Apr-May 2024: Coordinator and lecturer of BSc AI Taaltheorie en Taalverwerking course, University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2024: Lecture at MSc AI Natural Language Processing 2 course (Coordinator: Khalil Sima'an) on Semantic Underspecification in (Multimodal) LLMs, University of Amsterdam.
Sep-Oct 2023: Coordinator and lecturer of MSc BCS Higher Cognitive Functions course, University of Amsterdam.
Apr-May 2023: Coordinator and lecturer of BSc AI Taaltheorie en Taalverwerking course, University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2023: Lecture at MSc AI Natural Language Processing 2 course (Coordinator: Khalil Sima'an) on Semantic representations of words in masked language models, University of Amsterdam.
March 2023: Lecture at BSc AI Language, Speech and Dialogue Processing (Coordinator: Wilker Aziz) on An introduction to visually-grounded language modeling and Image Captioning.
Sep-Oct 2022: Coordinator and lecturer of MSc BCS Higher Cognitive Functions course, University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2022: Lecture at MSc AI Natural Language Processing 2 course (Coordinator: Khalil Sima'an) on Visually-grounded semantics in multimodal pre-trained Transformers, University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2022: Guest lecture at MSc CS Machine Learning for NLP course (Lecturer: Aurelie Herbelot) on Visually Grounded Language and Dialogue Models, University of Trento.
Nov-Dec 2021: Coordinator and lecturer (with Wilker Aziz) of MSc AI Natural Language Processing 1 course, University of Amsterdam.
Sep-Oct 2021: Coordinator and lecturer of MSc BCS Higher Cognitive Functions course, University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2021: Lecture at MSc AI Computational Dialogue Modelling course (Lecturer: R. Fernández) on Visually Grounded Language and Dialogue Models, University of Amsterdam.
Feb 2021: Lecture at MSc AI Natural Language Processing 2 course (Coordinator: Khalil Sima'an) on Modeling Gradable Adjectives Leveraging Visual Contexts, University of Amsterdam.
May 2020: Guest lecture at MSc MoL Structures for Semantics course (Lecturer: M. Aloni) on Learning the Visually-Grounded Meaning of Quantifiers, University of Amsterdam.
Apr 2020: Lecture at MSc AI Natural Language Processing 2 course (Coordinator: Elia Bruni) on Modeling Gradable Adjectives Leveraging Visual Contexts, University of Amsterdam.
2024: Behrang Mehrparvar, MSc Brain and Cognitive Science internship (University of Amsterdam): Detecting and translating language ambiguity with multilingual LLMs
2024: Pieter de Regt, MSc AI thesis (University of Amsterdam): An investigation of word acquisition in humans and LLMs, co-supervised with Michael Hanna (UvA)
2024: Francesco Tinner, MSc AI thesis (University of Amsterdam): Studying what language models know via probabilistic prompting, co-supervised with Wilker Aziz (UvA)
2024: Nitya Shah, MSc Psychology thesis (University of Amsterdam): Theory of Mind and Social abilities in Multimodal LLMs, co-supervised with Claire Stevenson
Supervision
2019-2024: Ece Takmaz, PhD candidate (University of Amsterdam): Visual and Linguistic Processes in Deep Neural Networks, co-supervised with Raquel Fernandez (UvA)
2023: Brent Brakenhoff, BSc AI thesis (University of Amsterdam): Comparing the FROMAGe and BLIP-2 Language-and-Vision models, co-supervised with Alberto Testoni (UvA)
2023: Juell Sprott, BSc AI thesis (University of Amsterdam): Assessing the Novelty of Objects in Language-and-Vision Models: Evaluating Model Performance and Introducing a Novelty Metric for Object Recognition, co-supervised with Alberto Testoni (UvA)
2023: Yuyu Bai, MSc AI thesis (VU Amsterdam): Bridging the Modalities: Investigating the Integration of Information from Language and Vision in Multimodal Models
2023: Angela van Sprang, MSc AI thesis (University of Amsterdam): On Numerosity Representations in Language-Vision Models, co-supervised with Jelle Zuidema
2023: Frank Wildenburg, Master of Logic thesis (University of Amsterdam): Semantic underspecification in large language models
2023: Ilke Asal, MSc Brain and Cognitive Science internship (University of Amsterdam): Multimodality of Meaning: Evaluating Transformer Models' Neurobiological Plausibility, co-supervised with Raquel Fernandez (UvA)
2023: Torrey Snyder, MSc Brain and Cognitive Science internship (University of Amsterdam): Multimodality of Meaning: Evaluating Transformer Models' Neurobiological Plausibility, co-supervised with Raquel Fernandez (UvA)
2022: Felix van Deelen, MSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Image Captioning in the context of Dutch news, in collaboration with the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS)
2022: Xinyi Chen, MSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Language and Reasoning abilities of pre-trained language models
2022: Rutger van Woerkom, MSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Classifying and identifying SDGs in texts
2022: Lars Buijtelaar, BSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Lexical semantics in pre-trained Transformers
2021: Lennert Jansen, MSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): A Plug-and-Play Approach to Age-Adaptive Dialogue Generation, co-supervised with Raquel Fernandez (UvA)
2020: Eleonora Gualdoni, MSc thesis (University of Trento): Exploring the language of grounded and ungrounded referring expressions in human dialogues
2020: Yulya Parfenova, MSc thesis (VU Amsterdam): Reasoning about Objects' Size: An Odd-One-Out Approach to Visual Question Answering
2019: Ece Takmaz, MSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Enhancing neural image captioning with eye-tracking
2019: Jurre Wolsink, BSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Exploring the contribution of semantic information in stance detection
2019: Amos Bastian, BSc thesis (University of Amsterdam): Irony Detection in Tweets
2018: Ionut T. Sorodoc, research assistant (University of Trento): Learning Quantification from Images: A Structured Neural Architecture
2018: Alberto Testoni, MSc student project (University of Trento): Quantifiers in Vision, Language, and Sound
2018: Marta Cristofanini, MSc student project (University of Trento): Semantic Similarity of Quantifiers
2017: David Addison Smith, MSc student project (University of Trento): Exploring the Mass/Count Distinction in Vision
Outreach
2024: I recorded a video tutorial on interpretability - available soon
2024: With Alberto Testoni (UvA), I held a game activity at the ILLC Open Day based on our ACL 2024 paper "Naming, Describing, and Quantifying Visual Objects in Humans and LLMs"
2024: I disseminated some of my research projects through the Center for Explainable Responsible and Theory-driven Artificial Intelligence, CERTAIN-AI
2024: I gave a dissemination talk at the IAS, Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, on "Large Language Models as Interlocutors"
2021: I talked about my research on "Exploring Adaptation of Conversational Systems to Different Age Groups" in a video, publicly available on YouTube
2018: I gave a lecture on NLP and poetry, Counting Pascoli: Computational Linguistics Applied to Poetry, at my former high school Liceo Scientifico N. Tron Schio (Italy)
Service
2024: Co-organizer of the RepL4NLP workshop at ACL 2024
2024: Co-organizer of the UnImplicit workshop at EACL 2024
2024: Reviewer for LREC-Coling, TACL, ARR
2023: Reviewer for ACL, IWCS, TACL, WUPS
2022: Reviewer for ARR, *SEM @NAACL, COLING, TACL
2022: Action Editor for NAACL
2021: Co-organizer of the third edition of LANTERN @EACL