PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Giovanni Adorni

Giovanni Adorni is an Italian computer scientist and EurAI Fellow at the University of Genoa whose AI research ranged from computer vision and language-driven scene generation to robot soccer and prerequisite learning in educational texts. After graduating in electrical engineering at Genoa in 1976, he published on cognitive models for computer vision at Coling 1982 and on natural-language-driven image generation at the 1984 COLING and ACL meeting in Stanford. His career took him to professorships at Trento and Parma, a research project director post at Thinking Machine Co. in Boston, and the Azzurra Robot Team at RoboCup 1999. Back in Genoa, he served as general chair of AI*IA 2016 and as president of the Italian digital-culture association AICA for 2019–2021. He is now a contract professor in the university's DIBRIS department.

Timeline

  1. 1976–1977

    Electrical engineering at Genoa

    He graduates in electrical engineering from the University of Genoa in 1976, then continues his studies at the IBM Research Center and at the CNR in Rome. In 1977, he joins AICA, an association that promotes digital culture in Italy.

  2. 1982–1984

    Scene generation from language

    He coauthors "Cognitive Models for Computer Vision" with A. Boccalatte and Mauro Di Manzo for Coling 1982, and "Natural Language Input for Scene Generation" with Di Manzo for the first EACL conference in 1983. In July 1984, he and Di Manzo publish "Natural Language driven Image Generation" with Fausto Giunchiglia at the joint COLING and ACL meeting in Stanford, California.

  3. 1980s–1990s

    Trento, Parma and Thinking Machines

    In the mid-1980s, he becomes an associate professor at the University of Trento, then a full professor at the University of Parma, where he stays until the late 1990s before returning to Genoa. He also works in Boston as a research project director at Thinking Machine Co., and in 1988 he helps found the engineering company AUTOMA, staying on its board until 1993.

  4. 1999

    The Azzurra Robot Team

    He coauthors the RoboCup 1999 team description of the Azzurra Robot Team (ART) with Daniele Nardi, Andrea Bonarini, Enrico Pagello and four others. ART brings together research groups from Genova, Padova, Palermo, Parma, Rome's La Sapienza and Politecnico Milano within the RoboCup Italia project, which trains students in autonomous mobile robot design.

  5. 2016–2019

    AI*IA 2016 and prerequisite learning

    He is general chair of AI*IA 2016, the 15th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, held in Genoa in 2016 with Stefano Cagnoni, Marco Gori and Marco Maratea as program chairs. In 2019, he coauthors an NLP-based approach to concept prerequisite learning for the Sixth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2019).

  6. By 2019

    A EurAI fellowship

    By 2019, he is a Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI). He is among the current Fellows of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) for the University of Genova, an honour the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence counts among its members' international awards.

  7. 2019–2021

    President of AICA

    In January 2019, AICA names him its president for the 2019–2021 term. He is then a full professor of information processing systems in the Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering of Genoa's Scuola Politecnica, and he has helped found GLIA, AICA's working group on artificial intelligence.

  8. As of October 2026

    Contract professor at DIBRIS

    He is a contract professor in the University of Genoa's Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering (DIBRIS), and he sits on the joint teacher-student committee of the university's Scuola Politecnica.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Giovanni Adorni yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. AICA: nuovo presidente per il triennio 2019- 2021 - LineaEDP lineaedp.it. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Giovanni Adorni - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. NAtural Language driven Image Generation - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Robocup 1999 Team Description: Azzurra Robot Team - ART ida.liu.se. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. [DL] AI*IA 2016: First call for papers mailman.zih.tu-dresden.de. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Awards | European Association for Artificial Intelligence eurai.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Aixia | Riconoscimenti aixia.it. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. Giovanni Adorni | Rubrica UniGe rubrica.unige.it. Checked 19 October 2026.