Alessandro Di Stefano
Senior Lecturer, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK
About me
I am a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK, School of Computing, Engineering & Digital Technologies (SCEDT), Department of Computing & Games. I have an interdisciplinary approach to research which incorporates engineering and computer science methodologies applied to socio-technological systems.
I was born in Catania, Sicily, Italy in 1985. I received my BSc (2009) and MSc degrees (2012) in Telecommunications Engineering from the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering (DIEEI) at University of Catania, Italy, and the PhD in Systems Engineering from the same University, in 2015.
After my PhD, I worked as postdoctoral researcher at DIEEI, University of Catania, for almost four years, and then as a research associate and teaching assistant at the Department of Engineering, King’s College London (KCL), London, UK, supervised by Prof. Nishanth Sastry. Recently, I worked as a research associate at Computer Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, UK, supervised by Prof. Pietro Liò, with whom I have been collaborating since 2012.
I am an IEEE member and part of the IEEE Professional Communication Society and the Technical Committee on Computational Life Sciences, and also member of the Complex Systems Society (CSS) council. I collaborate with several universities all over the world and I serve as a reviewer for various top-tier journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Nature Scientific Reports, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, and PloS One, and leading international conferences (IJCAI, KDD, CIKM, ICDCS, ICDCN, etc.), where I have often been invited to join the Technical Program Committee of these events.
Apart from my passion for doing research, I love playing football, swimming and running and also listening to music, reading books and travelling.
What's New
New!! [July 2025] Our work: “FAIRGAME: a framework for AI agents bias recognition using game theory” has been accepted at the28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2025!! Check the arXiv preprint version at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14325
New!! [July 2025] Our work: “Trust AI regulation? Discerning users are vital to build trust and effective AI regulation” has been published in Applied Mathematics and Computation!! Check it out at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0096300325003534
New!! [July 2025] Our work: “Vessel Propulsion Power Forecasting Using Variational Mode Decomposition and Convolutional Neural Networks ” has been presented in ICECET!!https://www.icecet.com/
New!! [June 2025] Our work: “AI-Driven Intelligent Design and Business Intelligence System for Automated Technical Drawings in the Roofing Industry” has been presented in DFBI 2025!!https://www.dfbi.net/
New!! [June 2025] Our work: “A Multimodal AI Framework for Sustainable Inventory Management and Waste Reduction in the uPVC Fenestration Industry” has been presented in DFBI 2025!!https://www.dfbi.net/
New!! [April 2025] Our work: “Enhancing Construction Design Efficiency: An Approach to Data Extraction with Natural Language Processing for Technical Drawing” has been published in SASBE 2024!! Check it out at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_70
New!! [Mar 2025] A second output of the “2025 AI Governance Modelling Workshop” at Teesside University, namely our work: “Do LLMs trust AI regulation? Emerging behaviour of game-theoretic LLM agents" has been published on ArXiv!! Check it out at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08640
New!! [Mar 2025] Co-organisation and participation to the “2025 AI Governance Modelling Workshop” at Teesside University. One of the outputs, namely our work: “Media and responsible AI governance: a game-theoretic and LLM analysis" has been published on ArXiv!! Check it out at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.09858
New!! [Jan 2025] Organisation of “AMETHYST- Game Theory in Complex Systems”, satellite event at CCS 2025 (Conference on Complex Systems), 1-5 September 2025!! Check it out at: https://amethystsatellite.weebly.com/
New!! [Dec 2024] Satellite Chair at CCS 2025 (Conference on Complex Systems), 1-5 September 2025!! Check it out at: hhttps://ccs25.cssociety.org/committees/
New!! [July 2024] Our work: “Keraia: A Knowledge Engineering and Reference AI Architecture” has been published in ICICT 2024!! Check it out at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-97-3562-4_27
New!! [April 2024] Our work: “Both eyes open: Vigilant Incentives help Auditors improve AI Safety” has been published in Journal of Physics - Complexity!! Check it out at: https://doi.org/10.1088/2632-072X/ad424c
New!! [Mar 2024] Organisation of “AMETHYST- Game Theory in Complex Systems”, satellite event at CCS 2024 (Conference on Complex Systems), 2-6 September 2024!! Check it out at: https://amethystsatellite.weebly.com/
New!! [June 2023] Our work: “Both eyes open: Vigilant Incentives help Auditors improve AI Safety” has been accepted to be included at STAI 2023 - The Safe and Trustworthy AI Workshop (ICLP 2023) !! Check it out at: https://www.stai.uk/home
New!! [May 2023] Our work: “Recognition of Behavioural Intention in Repeated Games using Machine Learning” has been accepted at ALIFE 2023 - Ghost in the Machine - 24-28 July 2023, Sapporo, Japan!! Check it out at: https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/35/103/116860
New!! [May 2023] Our work: “A tale of two Regulatory Markets: the role of institutional incentives in supporting sustainable Regulatory Markets for future AI system”has been accepted at ALIFE 2023 - Ghost in the Machine, 24-28 July 2023, Sapporo, Japan!! Check it out at: https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/35/122/116902
New!! [February 2023] Our work: “Social diversity reduces the complexity and cost of fostering fairness” has been published in Elsevier - Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals !! Check it out at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2022.113051
New!! [October 2022] Invited talk on “Bridging AI, Game Theory and Complex Networks for making inferences” at CCS 2022 (Conference on Complex Systems), 19 October 2022!! Check it out at: https://sites.google.com/view/ccs2022-ml-network/speakers-and-abstracts
Research interests
My research is interdisciplinary and my main research interests include:
Game Theory
Network Science
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Human Cooperation
Homophily
Epidemic Spreading
More recently, I have been also focusing on methodologies bringing together network science, game theory and machine learning.
Details of my publications can be found on my Google Scholar profile (Google Scholar) or my Publications page (Publications).
Selected Publications
1. Di Stefano, A., Scatà, M., Attanasio, B., La Corte, A., Liò, P., & Das, S. K. (2020). “A Novel Methodology for designing Policies in Mobile Crowdsensing Systems”. Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Vol. 67, 2020, 101230, ISSN 1574-1192, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2020.101230 - preprint version: arXiv:2001.06437.
2. Scatà, M., Di Stefano, A., La Corte, A., & Liò, P. (2020). “Multiplex Social Contagion Dynamics Model to shape and discriminate D2D content dissemination”. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, doi: 10.1109/TCCN.2020.3027697. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9209110.
3. Di Stefano, A., Scatà, M., Vijayakumar, S., Angione, C., La Corte, A., & Liò, P. (2019). “Social dynamics modeling of chrono-nutrition”. PLoS computational biology, 15(1), e1006714. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006714.
4. Scatà, M., Di Stefano, A., La Corte, A., & Liò, P. (2018). “Quantifying the propagation of distress and mental disorders in social networks”. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23260-2 - Featured in “Le Scienze - Scientific American”: https://www.lescienze.it/2018/03/22/news/.
5. Scatà, M., Di Stefano, A., Liò, P., & La Corte, A. (2016). “The impact of heterogeneity and awareness in modeling epidemic spreading on multiplex networks”. Scientific reports, 6, 37105. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37105.
6. Scatà, M., Di Stefano, A., La Corte, A., Liò, P., Catania, E., Guardo, E., & Pagano, S. (2016). “Combining evolutionary game theory and network theory to analyze human cooperation patterns”. Chaos, solitons & fractals, 91, 17-2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2016.04.018.
7. Di Stefano, A., Scatà, M., La Corte, A., Liò, P., Catania, E., Guardo, E., & Pagano, S. (2015). “Quantifying the role of homophily in human cooperation using multiplex evolutionary game theory”. PloS one, 10(10), e0140646. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0140646 - Featured in “Le Scienze-Scientific American”: https://www.lescienze.it/2015/10/23/news/.