Inventori e Supereroi

The presentation Inventori e Supereroi was both a personal journey and a technical roadmap for how computer science can translate into real-world impact. Alessio Signorini traced his path from an early passion for building and hacking—Lego, Meccano, early programming, reverse engineering—to formal studies in computer science and research on the Web, including large-scale measurement of search engines and Internet growth. This grounded the talk in solid CS foundations: algorithms, optimization, data collection, and empirical measurement at scale.

A key theme was how those foundations later enabled work in industry, from search and information retrieval to applied data science in healthcare. Signorini emphasized the shift from sparse, episodic data (traditional medical visits) to continuous, passive data streams generated by digital systems and wearables. He showed how machine learning on large-scale behavioral and physiological data can improve population-level monitoring, prediction, and prevention, with measurable impact in terms of public health outcomes.

The “superhero” metaphor referred to modern tools available to technologists today: cloud computing, virtually unlimited storage and compute, and especially AI and large language models, which dramatically lower the friction from idea to prototype. The message to students was clear: deep technical skills still matter, but curiosity, experimentation, and the willingness to apply technology to meaningful problems matter even more. We are in a unique position where a single motivated engineer or researcher can have outsized impact—if we choose problems that matter and use these tools responsibly.