Salvatore Distefano is an Associate Professor at the University of Messina (Italy). He was formerly an Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano (2011-2015). In 2001 he got a master degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Catania (summa cum laude), and, in 2006, he received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Messina (summa cum laude),.

He authored and co-authored more than 250 scientific papers and contributions to international journals, conferences, and books.
Currently, his h-index is 34 in Google Scholar (> 3700 citations) and 27 in Scopus (> 2300 citations). He is the recipient of some best paper awards. He visited as scholar and professor different universities and research centers such as:

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA; 
Network Research Lab at University of California Los Angeles, Computer Science Department, USA;
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Duke University, Durham, USA;
Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia;
Professor Fellow at Kazan Federal University from 2015-2018, Kazan, Russia.

During such visits, he established collaboration with top scientists such as Liudong Xing (UMass Dartmouth), Mario Gerla (UCLA), Kishor Trivedi (Duke), Bertrand Meyer (Innopolis), Arndt Bode (TUM), D. Avresky, Rajkumar Buyya (UniMelb), Carlo Ghezzi (PoliMi), Symeon Papavassiliou (NTUA).
He took part to several national and international projects, such as Reservoir, Vision (EU FP7), SMSCOM (EU FP7 ERC Advanced Grant), Beacon, IoT-Open.EU (EU H2020).
He was the recipient of the Higher Institute of Information Technologies and Information Systems, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia, 1 M$ Professor Fellowship Grant - 2015-2018.
He is a member of several international conference committees and he is on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, International Journal of Performability Engineering, International Journal of Cloud Computing, International Journal of Engineering and Industries, International Journal of Big Data, International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Applications, International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, Sensors. He has also acted as guest editor for special issues of the Journal of Risk and Reliability, Performance Evaluation, Journal of Performability Engineering, ACM Performance Evaluation Review, and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
His main research interests include: non-Markovian modeling; performance and reliability evaluation; dependability; sustainability; trustworthiness; Quality of Service/Experience; Service Level Agreement; Parallel and Distributed, Grid, Cloud, Autonomic, Volunteer, Crowd, Edge, Fog, Continuum Computing; Internet of Things; Cyber Physical Social Systems; Smart Cities; Intelligent Transportation Systems; Digital Health; Swarm and collective intelligence; Big Data, Stream Processing; Software and Service Engineering; Software Defined and virtualized ecosystems; DevOps, DataOps; Hyper Spectral Imaging; Machine Learning. During his research activity, he contributed to the development of several tools such as WebSPN, ArgoPerformance, GS3 and Stack4Things.
Since 2018 he is in the Board of the BigData CINI Lab, since 2021 as the deputy director for research. In 2020 he established in CINI the Covid19 Task Force, he is still coordinating. He also established, in 2021, the CINI Working Group in System and Service Quality, acting as director.
He is also one of the co-founder of the SmartMe.io start up, a spin-off of the University of Messina established in 2017.


Selected Publications

• S. Distefano, and A. Puliafito, “Dependability Evaluation with Dynamic Reliability Block Diagrams and Dynamic Fault Trees”, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Vol 6, no 1 ( January-March, 2009), pp. 4 – 17 (ISSN: 1545-5971), IEEE Computer Society publisher. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2007.70242]

• S. Distefano, M. Scarpa, and A. Puliafito, “From UML to Petri Nets: the PCM-based Methodology” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 37, no 1 (January 2011), pp 65–79, IEEE Computer Society. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2010.10]

• V. D. Cunsolo, S. Distefano, A. Puliafito, and M. Scarpa, “GS3: a Grid Storage System with Security Features” Journal of Grid Computing, Vol. 8, no 3 (2010), pp. 391–418 (ISSN: 1570-7873), Springer Netherlands.
  [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10723-010-9157-9]

• S. Distefano and A. Puliafito, “ Cloud@Home: Goals, Challenges and Benefits of a Volunteer Cloud,” Communication of the ACM, ACM TechNews, March 25, 2011. [http://cacm.acm.org/news/106754-cloudhome-goals-challenges-and-benefits-of-a-volunteer-cloud/ fulltext]

• S. Distefano and A. Puliafito, “ Cloud@Home: Towards a Volunteer Cloud,” In IT Professional, vol. 14, no 1, p. 27-31, 2012, ISSN: 1520-9202, IEEE Computer society. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2011.111]

• A. Cuomo, G. Di Modica, S. Distefano, A. Puliafito, M. Rak, O. Tomarchio, S. Venticinque and U. Villano “An SLA- based Broker for Cloud Infrastructures” In Journal of Grid Computing, 2012, ISSN: 1572-9184, Springer, Netherlands. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10723-012-9241-4]

• S. Distefano, M. Fazio, and A. Puliafito “Managing volunteer resources in the Cloud”, In International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, Vol. 8, No 3, July 2013 Pages 227-239, ISSN online: 1742-7193, ISSN print: 1742-7185, Inderscience. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJCSE.2013.055357]

• D. Bruneo, S. Distefano, F. Longo, and M. Scarpa, “Stochastic Evaluation of QoS in Service-Based Systems”, In IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Oct. 2013, Vol. 24, No. 10, pp. 2090-2099 IEEE Computer Society. [doi: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TPDS.2012.313]

• D. Bruneo, S. Distefano, F. Longo, A. Puliafito, and M. Scarpa, “Workload-Based Software Rejuvenation in Cloud Systems”, In IEEE Transactions on Computer, Vol. 62, No. 6, June 2013, pp. 1072-1085 IEEE Computer Society. [doi: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TC.2013.30]

• S. Distefano, and A. Puliafito, “Information Dependability in Distributed Systems: the Dependable Distributed Storage System”, In Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, Vol. 21, No 1, 2014, pp 3-18, ISSN: 1069-2509 (Print) 1875-8835 (Online) IOS Press. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/ICA-130444]

• S. Distefano, C. Ghezzi, S. Guinea, and R. Mirandola, “Dependability Assessment of Web Service Orchestrations”, In IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Sept. 2014, Vol. 63, no 3, pp. 689–705, ISSN: 0018-9529, IEEE Reliability Society. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TR.2014.2315939]

• S. Distefano and G. Serazzi “Performance Driven WS Orchestration and Deployment in Service Oriented Infrastructure” In Journal of Grid Computing, June 2014, Vol. 12, no 2, pp 347-369 Springer Netherlands. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10723-014-9293- 8]

• S. Distefano, G. Merlino and A. Puliafito “A Utility Paradigm for IoT: the Sensing Cloud”, In Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 2015, Vol. 20, pp. 127–144, ISSN: 1389-1286, Elsevier. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2014.09.006]

• S. Distefano, G. Merlino, and A. Puliafito, “A framework for device-centric sensing Cloud” In International Journal of Cloud Computing, 2015, Vol. 4, no 2, pp. 150–165 (ISSN: 1570-7873), Inderscience Publisher. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJCC.2015.069274]

• S. Distefano, G. Merlino, and A. Puliafito, “Device-centric Sensing: an Alternative to Data-centric Approaches”, In IEEE Systems Journal, 2015, IEEE Publisher. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2015.2448533]

• S. Distefano, F. Longo, M. Scarpa “QoS Assessment of Mobile Crowdsensing Services” In Journal of Grid Computing, 2015, Springer Netherlands. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10723-015-9338-7]

• Giovanni Merlino, Stamatis Arkoulis, Salvatore Distefano, Chrysa Papagianni, Antonio Puliafito, Symeon Papavassiliou, “Mobile crowdsensing as a service: A platform for applications on top of sensing Clouds”, Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume 56, 2016, Pages 623-639, ISSN 0167-739X. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2015.09.017]

• Jordi Vallverdu ́, Max Talanov, Salvatore Distefano, Manuel Mazzara, Alexander Tchitchigin, Ildar Nurgaliev, “A cognitive architecture for the implementation of emotions in computing systems”, Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, Volume 15, 2016, Pages 34-40, ISSN 2212-683X. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bica.2015.11.002]

• G. Merlino, D. Bruneo, S. Distefano, F. Longo, A. Puliafito, “Stack4Things: a sensing-and-actuation-as-a-service frame- work for IoT and cloud integration” Annals of Telecommunications, 2016, Springer. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12243-016-0528-5]

• D. Cerotti; S. Distefano; G. Merlino; A. Puliafito, ”A Crowd-Cooperative Approach for Intelligent Transportation Systems,” in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems , vol.PP, no.99, pp.1-11. [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2016.2609606]

• R. Pinciroli, S. Distefano, “Characterization and Evaluation of Mobile CrowdSensing Performance and Energy Indicators”, ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, Volume 44 Issue 4, March 2017, pp 80-90, [doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3092819.3092829]

• S. Distefano, D. Bruneo, F. Longo, G. Merlino, A. Puliafito, “I/Ocloud: Adding an IoT Dimension to Cloud infrastructure”, IEEE Computer, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 57-65, January 2018. [doi: http://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2018.1151016]

• S. Distefano, R.Dautov, D. Bruneo, F. Longo, G. Merlino, A. Puliafito, R. Buyya, “Metropolitan Intelligent Surveillance Systems for Urban Areas by Harnessing IoT and Edge Computing Paradigms”, Software: Practice and Experience, vol. 48, no. 8, pp. 1475– 1492,Wiley and sons Publisher, 2018. [doi: http://doi.org/10.1002/spe.2586]

• R. Dautov, S. Distefano, D. Bruneo, F. Longo, G. Merlino and A. Puliafito, “Data Processing in Cyber-Physical-Social Systems through Edge Computing,” in IEEE Access, 2018, Volume 6, pp. 29822–29835. [doi: http://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2839915]

• R. Dautov, S. Distefano, D. Bruneo, F. Longo, G. Merlino and A. Puliafito, “Data Agility through Clustered Edge Computing and Stream Processing”, in Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, Wiley & sons, 2019 [doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.5093]

• Dario Bruneo, Salvatore Distefano, Maurizio Giacobbe, Antonino Longo Minnolo, Francesco Longo, Giovanni Merlino, Davide Mulfari, Alfonso Panarello, Giuseppe Patane’, Antonio Puliafito, Carlo Puliafito, Nachiket Tapas, “An IoT service ecosystem for Smart Cities: the #SmartME project”, in Journal of Internet of Things: Engineering Cyber Physical Human Systems, Volume 5, March 2019, Pages 12–33, Elsevier. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iot.2018.11.004]

• R. Dautov, S. Distefano, D. Bruneo, and G. Merlino, “Enabling Workload Engineering in Edge, Fog and Cloud Computing through OpenStack-based Middleware”, in ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Volume 19 Issue 2, April 2019, Article No. 28, pp 1– 22, ACM. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3309705]

• R. Dautov, S. Distefano, and R. Buyya, “Hierarchical Data Fusion for Smart Healthcare”, in Journal of Big Data, Springer, 2019, 6:19. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-019-0183-6]

• R. Dautov and S. Distefano, “Automating IoT Data-Intensive Application Allocation in Clustered Edge Computing”, in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE, 2019, 6:19. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2019.2923638]

• Salvatore Distefano, and Rustem Dautov “Stream Processing on Clustered Edge Devices”, In Transactions on Cloud Computing, 2020, IEEE. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TCC.2020.2983402]

• Muhammad Ahmad, Adil Mehmood Khan, Manuel Mazzara, Salvatore Distefano, Mohsin Ali, Muhammad Shahzad Sarfraz (2020). “A fast and compact 3D CNN for Hyperspectral Image Classification”. In IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 10(14), 4739.

• Distefano, S., Giacomo, A.D., Mazzara, M.; Trustworthiness for Transportation Ecosystems: The Blockchain Vehicle Information System (2021) IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 22 (4), art. no. 9351814, pp. 2013-2022. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85101425858 [doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2021.3054996]