Curriculum Vitae Laura Sacerdote - Laura Sacerdote

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Laura Sacerdote
Brief Curriculum vitae

Laura Sacerdote is full professor of Probability and Statistics since March 2000, at the Department of Mathematics of Turin University. She is coordinator of Mathematics Programs of Torino University and she has also some administrative roles in Department and School commissions. Previously she has been a tenured research associate and then Associate Professor of Probability and Statistics at the Universities of Salerno and Turin.

From August 1998 to July 1999 she has been a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Statistics of the North Carolina State University at Raleigh (U.S.A.), taking part in the local program of Biomathematics. Since the work for her thesis in Physics at the University of Turin, supervised by Professor L.M. Ricciardi, her interests focussed on the application of the theory of stochastic processes to biological modeling with special focus on neuronal modelling. Her research are strongly interdisciplinary and include collaborations with Computer Scientists, Physicists, Neuroscientists, Statisticians and Mathematicians.

Research topics

Probabilistic and Statistical topics of my past and recent researches are:

· Study of Stochastic Differential Equations eventually constrained by boundaries;

· Diffusion approximations of Multivariate Markov processes and of their first Passage times;

· Space time transformations between diffusion processes ;

· Development of statistical method to detect dependencies between point processes;

· Use of the copulas in networks modeling;

· Numerical methods for the solution of stochastic differential equations and of the study of their functional (survival times, first passage times,…);

· Direct and inverse first passage time (one-dimensional or two dimensional; single boundary or exit from a strip);

· Estimation problem for the parameters of diffusion processes constrained by boundaries;

· Branching processes, their continuous limits and their fractional extensions;

· Neuronal models and neural network models;

· Models for the atomic clock error

· Information measures and their estimators.

Organizing Activity

She has organized and chaired various international workshops. She was in the Scientific and organizing Commitee of the 5th International Workshop ``Neuronal Coding'' (Aulla (Ms) from September 20 through 25, 2003) and of "9-th Neural Coding” held at Limassol Cyprus, on October 29- November 3, 2010. She organized the International School ''Does noise simplify or complicate the dynamics of non linear systems?'' (Torino, April 13-17 2004) and has chaired the workshop ''Noise and biological Systems'' (Torino April 19-21, 2004) . She was in the local Organizing Committees of Biocomp 2005 and and BIOCOMP 2012, an International Conference dedicated to the memory of Luigi M. Ricciardi (Vietri sul Mare, Salerno) June 2012. She organizes yearly, since 2011 the "Welcome Home Workshop" ( 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) and has organized two editions of the "Torino-Juelich Workshop on Computational Neuroscience" (2013, 2015)

Administrative responsabilities
2000-2006 Vice-Head of Mathematics Department, Torino University.
2006 -2009 Coordinator of Torino Undergraduate and Graduate programs in Mathematics.

2006 -2010 Coordinator of Torino Graduate Program in Mathematics

2012-2015 Coordinator of Torino Graduate and Undergraduate programs in Mathematics

2015- Coordinator of Master’s degree in Stochastics and Data Science of Torino University

Co-authors

Petr Lansky (Academy of Sciences, Prague), Cindy Greenwood (University of British Columbia), Charles E. Smith (North Carolina State University), Alessandro E. P. Villa (Université de Lausanne), Martin Jacobsen (University of Copenhagen), Sunshuke Sato (Osaka University), P. Rodriguez (INRIA, Marseille), Massimiliano Tamborrino (University of Linz), Emiliano Torre (Juelich Forschungszentrum), Luigi M. Ricciardi (Università di Napoli), Amelia G. Nobile (Università di Salerno), Virginia Giorno (Università di Salerno), Maria Teresa Giraudo (Università di Torino), Cristina Zucca (Università di Torino), Roberta Sirovich (Università di Torino), Nello Balossino (Università di Torino), Luigi Favella (Università di Torino), Maria Teresa Reineri (Università di Torino), Federico Polito (Università di Torino), Elisa Benedetto (Università di Torino), Donata Bonino (Osservatorio Astronomico, Torino), Matteo Sereno (Università di Torino), Ottavia Telve (Università di Torino), Enrico Bibbona (Università di Torino), Angelica Pachon Pinzon (Università di Torino), Lorenzo Galleani (Politecnico di Torino), Patrizia Tavella (INRIM, Torino), Rosella Mininni (Università di Bari), Nello Buonocore (Università di Napoli), Giuseppe Cerbone, Francesca Tomassetti, Mario Gai (OATO, Torino), Michele Garetto (Università di Torino)

Further International connections:

Isaac Meilijson (Tel Aviv University), Goran Peskir (Manchester University), Michèle Thieullen (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris), Susanne Ditlevsen (Copenhagen University), Tatyana Aksenova (CEA, Grenoble), Sonja Gruen (Juelich Forschungszentrum), Markus Diesmann (Juelich Forschungszentrum), Roman Borisyuk (Plymouth University), Ron Kenett (KPA, Israel)

Some recent scientific activities and Invited talks:

• Invited talk at Mathematics Dept of Plymouth University (Royal Mathematical Society seminars) “Copulas: a powerful tool to investigate dependencies between random variables” February 18, 2015

• Invited talk at School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics, of Plymouth University “ First passage times of stochastic processes through boundaries and their applications” February 15, 2015

• Invited talk “On firing rate estimation for dependent interspike intervals” Copenhagen July 2, 2014 (Mathematical modelling and Statistical Analysis in Neuroscience Workshop)

• Invited talk “A new estimator for Mutual Information” Salerno University April 2, 2014 • Invited talk “On Mutual Information estimation” Prague July 3, 2014 (Beyond Shannon workshop)

• Invited talk “Super Brownian Motion as a Model for Information Dissemination between Mobile Devices” Planet Earth Conference- INDAM, May 27-29, 2013

• Invited talk “Super Brownian Motion as a Model for Information Dissemination between Mobile Devices” Copenhagen January, 31 2013

• Invited talks “First passage times of stochastic processes through boundaries and their applications” and “A Copulas Approach to the Analysis of dependences between Interspikes Intervals” Workshop on Statistical aspects of neural coding. Kyoto October-November 2012

• Plenary talk at “Stochastic Dynamics of Small Networks of Neurons” Workshop at American Institute of Mathematics (Palo Alto, CA, US) February 19-23, 2012

• Chairman of the minisymposium “Stochastic Models in Computational Neuroscience” 8-European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology, Cracow, June 2011

• Talk at “Stochastic Dynamics: Molecular Motors, Neuron Models and Epidemics on Networks” SAMSI, (NC-US), April 15-17, 2010

• Invited Talk at “Emerging topics in dynamical Systems and Partial Differential Equations” SIAM Meeting, Barcellona May 31-June 4, 2010

• Talk at “Stochastic Models in Computational Neuroscience”, CIRM, Marseille, January 18-22, 2010

Previously I gave numerous seminars and invited lectures in different countries: Europe, US, Japan, Latin America

Past and present Ph.D. students

F. Tomassetti Napoli University, 1994
Maria Teresa Giraudo, 1999, University of Milano.
Cristina Zucca, 2002 University of Milano,
Roberta Sirovich, (with A.E.P. Villa), 2006 University of Torino and University of Grenoble

Alessandro Sicco, 2008 Universtiy of Torino

Donata Bonino, 2009 University of Torino

Elisa Benedetto, University of Torino 2014

Anan Halabi, University of Torino (in progress)

Ottavia Telve, University & Politecnico of Torino (in progress)