Stefano Ferilli was born in Lecce. He got a Laurea degree in Information Science, a Master’s Degree in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Bari. He got his qualifying examination as an Engineer in 2005.

He has been a Researcher, Associate Professor and is now Full Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bari, where he has been the head of the ARA (Automated Reasoning and Learning) research laboratory since 2018, the scientific director of the Museum of Computer Science since 2006, and a member of the Council of the PhD program in Computer Science and Mathematics since 2005. For the University of Bari, he has also been the Head of the Interdepartmental Research Center on Logic and Applications (from 2006 to 2018), a member of the technical-scientific committee of the University Museum System (from 2010 to 2022), and a member of the scientific committee of the Scientific Section of the University Library System (from 2015 to 2023). Since 2018, he has been coordinator of the University of Bari node of the AIIS (Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Systems) National Laboratory of the National Consortium for Informatics (CINI).

Since 1997 member of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIIA), where he serves in the Steering Board since 2011, as a Treasurer from 2015 to 2024 and as a vice-president from 2024. Within AIIA, he is the national Coordinator of the working group on cultural Heritage. In 2004 he became a member of the Italian Association for Computing (AICA), where since 2021 he is a member of the Working Group on the History of Computer Science and since 2022 he is a member of the scientific committee of the AICA official journal “Mondo Digitale”.

His theoretical research interests are centered on Artificial Intelligence topics, and specifically on Logic and Algebraic Foundations of Machine Learning, Inductive Logic Programming, Theory Revision, Knowledge Representation, Multi-Strategy Reasoning, and Expert Systems, Data Mining and Process Mining. He investigated applications in the fields of Digital Document Processing, Digital Libraries & Archives, Cultural Heritage, Ambient Intelligence, Education, Landscape preservation & valorization, Bioinformatics. He developed, or contributed to the development, of working prototype systems in all these fields, including relational supervised and unsupervised learning systems.

His teaching activity in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses included various fundamental courses in Computer Science (among which “Programming”, “Algorithms and Data Structures”, “Programming Languages”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Intelligent Agents”, “Methods for Digital Document Processing”, “Applied Logics”, “Process Mining”).

He is a (co-)author of more than 350 scientific papers published on National and International journals, books and conferences/workshops proceedings, some of which awarded as “best papers”. He is the author of several monographs and books published in Italy, and of an international monograph on Digital Document Processing.