VIA Systems Lab Verona Intelligent Analytics Systems

VIA Systems Lab Verona Intelligent Analytics Systems

We design and study systems that make access to complex information spaces reliable, validated and interactive, bridging foundations in data management with human-centered analytics.

Research themes Projects

University of Verona, Verona, Italy

The VIA Systems Lab emblem: a Roman arch framing a paved road that leads towards the Verona Arena, with the joints between the paving stones drawn as the edges of a data graph.

01 About

About the lab

The VIA Systems Lab is a research lab at the University of Verona working on intelligent analytics systems, information access, and data-centric methods.

Its researchers work across data management and human-centered analytics, and specialise in open data and digital archives for the digital humanities. The research themes below set out the work in detail.

The lab is led by Matteo Lissandrini, Associate Professor of Computer Science. Everyone who works in it is listed under People, with their role.

How we use, and decline to use, AI tools in that work is set out in our statement on AI and scientific research.

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.

You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Dante Alighieri, Inferno XXVI

02 Research

Five themes, one question

How do you give a person a trustworthy answer over data that is large, heterogeneous and incomplete, and let them check it?

  1. Intelligent data analytics

    Systems and algorithms that make large, heterogeneous data collections searchable, combinable and analysable at the scale research actually produces.

    Query processing · Data discovery · Benchmarking DataGEMS

  2. Knowledge graphs and data exploration

    Graph data management and exploratory search over entity-centric, semantically linked collections, where the useful question is often the one you could not phrase up front.

    Graph DBMS · Entity search · Semantic integration DataGEMS

  3. Human-centered analytics

    Interactive and conversational interfaces that let a person steer an analysis, see what it did, and correct it while it runs.

    Interactive interfaces · Conversational analysis · User studies ARMADA

  4. Validated and trustworthy data systems

    Grounding, verification, explainability and evaluation designed into an analytical pipeline rather than bolted onto it once the answers are already out.

    Grounding · Explainability · Evaluation ARMADA

  5. Open data and digital archives

    FAIR and openly reusable data, with particular attention to digital archives and the digital humanities: collections that were assembled by scholars long before anyone called them a dataset.

    FAIR data · Digital humanities · Archive interlinking

03 Projects

Selected work

Funded research that members of the lab coordinate or take part in.

  • Active ARMADA

    ARMADA

    Reliable Conversational Domain-specific Data Exploration and Analysis

    A doctoral network training fifteen researchers on what it takes for a language model to be reliable when it assists analysis in a sensitive domain.

    Role
    Coordinator
    Programme
    MSCA Doctoral Networks
    Runs
    –

  • Active DataGEMS

    DataGEMS

    Data Discovery Platform with Generalized Exploratory, Management, and Search Capabilities

    A dataset discovery ecosystem that profiles heterogeneous data and guides people while they find, analyse and combine it.

    Role
    Partner
    Programme
    Horizon Europe, EOSC Exchange
    Runs
    –

All projects

04 People

People and affiliation

The lab brings together doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers and scientists in Verona, and works with collaborators beyond it.

Principal investigator

Members

External members