The Team

Director of WebValley, she co-directs together with Giuseppe Jurman WebValley’s Summer School since 2009. With a PhD at ETH Zurich, she started working in 2009 at the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK) in the Predictive Models for Biomedicine and Environment (MPBA) Unit as Project Manager & GeoICT Expert. From June 2017 she is leading the RIS Unit (Research and Innovation for School), which accomplishes FBK commitment to collaborate with institutions operating in this field. Each year more than 500 students are involved in networking projects between local bodies, including individual traineeships and camp. She promotes DomoSens®, a new model for projects with the schools.

Co-Director and Head of the Data Science for Health (DSH) Unit at FBK. Contributing to WebValley since 2002, Giuseppe Jurman is a mathematician, with a PhD in Algebra, working at MPBA on various aspects of data science, especially for computational biology. His main research interests are statistical machine learning, mathematical modeling for high-throughtput data and network analysis. He is also an expert in scientific programming with Python and other computing languages, and he teaches Data Visualization at the M.Sc. in Data Science at the University of Trento.

Elena is an environmental engineer, specialized in Atmospheric Physics. After completing her PhD at the University of Trento, she continued specializing in meteorological and air quality modeling in the private sector. Since 2022, she has been a researcher at FBK, where she develops artificial intelligence models for weather and climate applications, with a focus on innovative downscaling approaches to increase the spatial resolution of meteorological information. She joined the Webvalley team in 2023.

Gabriele Franch has completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science between FBK and the University of Trento. He participated in WebValley in 2002 and has worked in FBK and several startups in the last 10 years. Now he is a researcher at FBK, applying deep learning to weather nowcasting, to help civil protections in Italy to prevent floods. He has been webvalley lab tutor in the years 2009-2014 and 2017-2018.

Head of the Data Science for Industry and Physics unit (DSIP), Digital Industry Center, FBK, Trento, Italy. Physicist with a PhD in computational theoretical physics. As a data scientist, he is involved in projects ranging from machine learning for industrial and meteo/climate applications of time series forecasts to Deep Learning methods in High Energy and Space Physics.

Carlotta Cazzolli is completing a joint Master's degree in Cybersecurity at the University of Turku (Finland) and the University of Trento (Italy). She worked at FBK's DSH unit from 2023 to 2025 at Enogis until 2026, focusing on data science and machine learning applications in the medical and agricultural fields. She has also been a WebValley tutor since 2023.

Luca Coviello holds a PhD in Industrial Innovation about applying Deep Learning in the Agrifood industry (Enogis and University of Trento). He received the M.Sc. degree in Data Science from the EIT Digital Master School in November 2018. He participated in WebValley 2012 and started working in MPBA-FBK the next year, focusing on bioimaging and web applications. He is interested in deep learning and environmental sciences.

Beatrice is a biostatistician and earned her PhD in computational biology at the University of Trento with a project on an artificial intelligence application for drug repurposing. Currently, she is a researcher at FBK within the Data Science for Health unit.

Rishabh is a researcher at the DSIP unit of FBK. His work includes a mix of data science, deep learning and weather prediction. He's particularly interested in the practical applications of machine learning and open-source technologies that underpin the digital age.

Giacomo is a researcher at the DSIP unit of FBK. He's currently involved in developing and applying cutting-edge AI solutions to tackle significantly relevant weather challenges such as climate downscaling and precipitation nowcasting.

Irene is a research scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). After earning her PhD in atmospheric physics from the University of Copenhagen, she has focused on developing new methods for short-term weather forecasting (nowcasting). She co-coordinates the MLCast community, an international initiative that brings together weather services, researchers, and organizations to accelerate and unify machine learning-driven weather nowcasting efforts across borders. The WebValley 2026 student challenges are based on the MLCast community.

Uladzislau has completed his M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Trento. He works as a junior researcher in the Data Science for Industry and Physics unit (DSIP)

Tommaso is a B.Sc student in Physics at the University of Trento. He is working at FBK in the DSH unit.

Mattia Varagnolo is a Data Scientist in the Data Science for Industry and Physics (DSIP) unit at FBK and holds an M.Sc. in Data Science from the University of Padova. His work focuses on applying machine learning and deep learning to time series data and multidimensional datasets, with applications in research and weather-related services.

BSc Computer Science student at University of Trento and Research Assistant at FBK NILab, Trento. Interested in data science, machine learning, and statistical analysis for predictive modelling across scientific domains. His current work focuses on neuroinformatics, including high-dimensional neuroimaging data, dynamic brain connectivity and structure-to-function prediction.

Creative Developer freelancer and teacher at the Artigianelli Institute since 2020. He’s been a student at the Fontys Academy of Fine Art in the Netherlands and then in TAG - Trento Alta Formazione Grafica in Italy, where he took an in-depth look at Design Thinking methodologies and techniques. At WebValley he’s working on bringing the design methodologies in different fields such as education and research.

Director of Scientific Program. Cesare is a mathematician, CEO & founder of H3KLab , FBK senior advisor and former Head of the MPBA research unit. His research vision is the need for connecting high-throughput omics data with environmental variables (bio-geoinformatics), to support new predictive models in human and environmental health. He has published more than 100 scientific works, led about 60 research projects, help founding one spinoff company, but overall he is a founder of the WebValley Summer School, and has run the program since its first edition in 2001.