Eva Sciacca

Eva Sciacca è tecnologa presso l’Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF). Le sue recenti attività di ricerca riguardano: big data e visual analytic, sistemi di archiviazione e di computing che sfruttano infrastrutture distribuite. È stata impegnata negli ultimi 5 anni in diversi progetti finanziati dall’Unione Europea (quali VIALACTEA, INDIGO-DataCloud, AENEAS, EOSC-Pilot e NEANIAS) ed è attivamente coinvolta nelle attività IT della missione ESA GAIA, Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) e lo Square Kilometre Array (SKA) e i loro precursori.

Eva Sciacca was born in Catania (Italy) in 1983.

CURRENT POSITION Technology Researcher since February 2017 at the Astrophysical Observatory of Catania of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES She is member of the IT research group, and her research is focused on the design and implementation of software, services and tools supporting astrophysical simulations, analysis and data reduction pipelines on distributed computing/storage infrastructures. She has been engaged in the last 5 years in several European funded projects (such as VIALACTEA, INDIGO-DataCloud, AENEAS, EOSC-Pilot and NEANIAS) and she is actively involved within the IT activities of the ESA GAIA mission, Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and their precursors/pathfinders.

EDUCATION She obtained the MS degree in Computer Science at the University of Catania (Italy) in October 2006 (110/110 cum Laude). She obtained the Ph.D. in Mathematics for Technology at the University of Catania in February 2010. The Ph.D. thesis was entitled: “Contributions in Computational Biology” supervised by Prof. Giuseppe Nicosia.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC POSITIONS From September 2016 to January 2017 she was Fellowship Researcher at the INAF Astrophysical Observatory of Catania. From February 2012 to June 2016 she was Post-Doctoral Researcher at the INAF Astrophysical Observatory of Catania. From January 2010 to January 2012 she was Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Turin From August 2007 to December 2008, she was Visiting Student at MIT- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boston. U.S.A. From January 2006 to May 2006 she was Erasmus Student at the University of Turku–Finland. From July 2005 to December 2005 she holded a Scholarship at Consorzio Catania Ricerche. From March 2004 to July 2004 she did an Internship at STMicroelectronics s.p.a. Stradale Primosole 50, 95121, Catania.

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS She obtained the following awards, fellowships and grants: – UMI (Unione Matematica Italiana) Award for the MIT-Italy Program. 2007/2008 – Italian PhD Scholarship, 2007-2009 – Travel Award, Synthetic Biology 3.0, 2007 – “ARCHIMEDE” award from Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania, for the academic year 2003-2004, as graduated student with Excellent Career. – STMicroelectronics thesis award for the thesis entitled “Implementation of a compact model of semiconductor ’s bipolar devices (HICUM)”, supervised by Prof. A.M. Anile, was awarded on 07-06-2005.

SUPERVISION OF GRADUATE STUDENTS AND POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS Number of Post-doctoral fellows: 1 (INAF), Number of PhD Students: 2 (University of Catania, University of Malta), Number of Master Students: 6 (University of Catania, University of Portsmouth, University of Cape Town)

RESEARCH PROJECTS She is WP Leader for the project “NEANIAS: Novel EOSC Services for Emerging Atmosphere, Underwater & Space Challenges” funded by European Union under Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via grant agreement No.863448. She is participating/participated as member of research unit to the following projects: – SKA International Collaboration. She is participating to the Working Group that is defining the set of requirements that shall drive the design, the prototyping and the functional implementation of a shared, open and agile SKA Regional Center (SRC) federated software infrastructure, e.g., the SRC Distributed Software Platform (DSP), to be deployed and supported in-and-across the distributed, heterogeneous facilities of the SRC network. – ASTRI Collaboration. She is collaborating in the development of a system for the logging, monitoring, and alarm for the ASTRI mini-array telescopes. – EU H2020 AENEAS project. She participated in the development of a concept and design for a distributed, federated European Science Data Centre (ESDC) to support the astronomical community in achieving the scientific goals of the SKA. The work is mainly focused on the computing middleware design (WP3.3) and on the design of user interfaces for data processing, reprocessing, analysis, and visualization (WP5.3) – PRIN ACDC. This project aimed at creating a “data challenge” to enhance the scientific return of the ASTRI miniarray, an effort lead by INAF in collaboration with Brazil and South Africa in the framework of the CTA Consortium. The work was mainly focused on developing technologies to support the production of realistic level 3 data files (Events and Auxiliary files) in a format compliant with the CTA software requirements. – EU H2020 EOSC Pilot. She integrated in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) e-infrastructure of a visual analytics environment based on VisIVO (Visualization Interface for the Virtual Observatory) and its module VLVA (ViaLactea Visual Analytics). – EU H2020 AARC2. She implemented a pilot Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (AAI) for the CTA project based on the AARC Blueprint Architecture (BPA). – EU H2020 INDIGO-DataCloud project. She collaborated in the implementation of a first prototype of the CTA Archive using technologies for distributed systems deployed as a federation of different storage entities. – ESA GAIA Mission. She is collaborating to the implementation of algorithms for the CU3 AVU GSR. – CTA Initiative. She implemented a prototype for the CTA Science Gateway workflow management system and the CTA Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure prototype. – EU FP7 VIALACTEA project. Implementation of the VIALACTEA Science Gateway workflow management system and the VIALACTEA visual analytic desktop software. – EU FP7 SCI-BUS Project: SCIentfic gateway Based User Support. Implementation of an astrophysical science gateway based on the generic-purpose gUSE/WS-PGRADE portal family to access VisIVO software tools for creating customized views of 3D renderings from astrophysical datasets using scientific workflows. – EU FP7 ER-Flow Project. Design and implementation of scientific workflows for the astronomy and astrophysics community. – Muon Portal PON Project. Implementation of scientific workflows for detecting nuclear threat materials using visualization and data mining algorithms. – BioBITs Project: Developing White and Green biotechnologies by converging platforms from biology and information technology towards metagenomics. Implementation of methodologies and simulation tools for design and analysis of complex biological systems such as the processes in the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis between fungi and host plants.

ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCES Member of Local Organizing Committee (LOC) for the following events: – INAF ICT Workshop, 10-14 Settembre 2018. Catania, Italy. https://indico.ict.inaf.it/event/679/ – INAF ICT Workshop, 6-9 Ottobre 2015. Cefalù, Italy. https://indico.ict.inaf.it/event/141/overview – VO Days & Friends, 17- 19 Dicembre 2013. Catania, Italy. http://vobs.astro.it/ – 2nd SCI-BUS Project meeting, 16- 18 Ottobre 2012. Palermo, Italy.

EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES She is a referee of the following journals: Journal of Grid Computing; Future Generation Computer Systems; Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience; Astronomy and Computing; Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific; SoftwareX.

MEMBERSHIP OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES From 2016 she is member of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) From 2014 she is member of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Consortium: Data Management team From the 2014 she is member of the Gaia Data Process and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) In 2013/2014 she was member of Euromicro From 2008 she is member of Associazione Angelo Marcello Anile From 2008 to 2015 she was member of the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica (INdaM) – Gruppo Nazionale per il Calcolo Scientifico From 2008 to 2012 she was member of Unione Matematica Italiana (UMI)

TEACHING ACTIVITIES From September 2011 to January 2012, University of Turin, School of Sciences, she was tutor in laboratory for Web Services class (Languages and tools: HTML, JavaScript, JDBC, JSP). Also she was tutor in laboratory for basic Computer Science class (Language: Python). In December 2011, for EDUWORKS S.r.l. she was author of video lectures teaching “Introduction to Computer Science” course available at: http://www.29elode.it From May 2005 to July 2005 at the University of Catania- School of Sciences – Department of Computer Science she was tutor in laboratory for Web Programming Course (Languages: HTML, JavaScript, PHP).

PUBLICATIONS She co-authored more than 100 publications including 50 peer-reviewed journal papers, 36 peer-reviewed conference papers, 5 book chapters, 9 posters in conference presentations, with more than 9800 citations. Her H-Index is 20 (as for Google Scholar).

CV di Eva Sciacca