Piero Mussio

Timeline

1. 1983–2007

   From hydraulics to computing

   A hydraulic engineer, he turns to computer science early in his career and applies pattern recognition and image analysis to astronomical data, biomedical signals and mechanical blueprints. He works as a researcher in data analysis and pattern recognition at the Laboratory of Cosmic Physics of Italy’s National Research Council in Milan, then becomes a professor of computer science at the University of Milan. From 1983 to 2007, he serves as scientific coordinator and principal investigator of national, regional and local research units in international and national projects and industrial contracts.

2. 1984–1990

   Patterns in images and astronomy

   In 1984, he coauthors “Pattern-directed restoration and vectorization of digitized engineering drawings” with Umberto Cugini, G. Ferri and Marco Protti. In 1986, he coauthors “Uncertainty reduction techniques in an expert system for fault tree construction” with Sergio F. Garribba and Enrico Guagnini, and in 1988 he coauthors “Attributed conditional L-systems: a tool for image description” with Marco Padula and Marco Protti for ICPR. In 1990, he coauthors “A cognitive system for astronomical image interpretation” with Michael J. Kurtz and Peter G. Ossorio.

3. 1992–1995

   IAPR leadership roles

   He serves as President of the International Association for Pattern Recognition Italian Chapter from 1992 to 1994, then as Chair of the Italian IAPR Member Society from 1994 to 1995. He also promotes conferences and participates in the annual Machine Vision school.

4. 1995–1998

   Visual sentences and image understanding

   From 1995, he develops the theory of visual sentences with Francesca Costabile, Paolo Bottoni and Stefano Levialdi, aiming to give a coherent framework for visual communication. In 1998, he coauthors “Situated Image Understanding in a Multiagent Framework” with Nadia Bianchi, Paolo Bottoni, Corneliu Spinu and Catherine Garbay.

5. 1998

   An IAPR Fellowship

   In 1998, IAPR elects him a Fellow for contributions to image description and interpretation and for service to IAPR.

6. 1999–2001

   Visual Languages workshops

   He is program chair of the 1999 IEEE Workshop on Visual Languages in Tokyo and general co-chair of the 2000 workshop in Seattle. In 2001, he and Masahito Hirakawa publish “Special Issue on Selected Papers from VL99” in the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, where he serves as an associate editor.

7. 2004–2007

   Software Shaping Workshops

   In 2004, he coauthors “Software Environments for End-User Development and Tailoring” with Maria Francesca Costabile, Daniela Fogli, Giuseppe Fresta and Antonio Piccinno. In 2006, he, Costabile, Fogli and Piccinno publish the chapter “End-User Development: The Software Shaping Workshop Approach.” In 2007, the four coauthor “Visual Interactive Systems for End-User Development: A Model-Based Design Methodology” in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A.

8. August 2010

   Death of an IAPR Fellow

   In August 2010, he dies a few days before ICPR 2010 in Istanbul. His teaching reaches students, workers and shop-stewards, and one of his favorite sayings is “technology always betrays the user.”