Luca Mottola's Home Page

"The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague,
but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise"
E. W. Dijkstra - from the Humble Programmer, 1972.
(Read also another interesting article about abstraction).

I am an Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and a Senior Researcher at RI.SE, Sweden. My research is about designing, building, and validating networked embedded software to power the operation of the emerging Internet of Things!

Awards and Recognition

Best Paper Award and Best Pitch Video Award at the 8th ACM International Workshop on Energy Harvesting and Energy-neutral Sensing Systems (ENSSYS), 2020.
Best Paper Award at the 26th ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM), 2020.
Fokus Sweden 100 Most Productive Researchers in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Technology, 2019.
Hot Topics' Top 50 EMEA Cloud Climbers, by Hot Topics ltd. in collaboration with F5 Networks, 2018.
Best Paper Award at the 4th ACM International Workshop on Visible Light Communication Systems (VLCS - colocated with ACM MOBICOM), 2017.
ACM SigMobile Research Highlight for the paper "Reactive Control of Autonomous Drones" appeared at the 14th ACM MOBISYS, 2016.
Best Paper Award at the 14th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MOBISYS), 2016.
Best Paper Award at the 2nd ACM International Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications (DRONET - colocated with ACM MOBISYS), 2016.
Google Faculty Award for research work about computing on energy-harvesting embedded devices, 2015. [In the press: @Corriere Innovazione]
Young Innovator Award given by MIT Technology Review Italia and RIE Forum, 2013. [In the press: @Corriere Innovazione, @Corriere GeniusLAB]
Postscapes' Internet of Things Top 100 Thinkers , also based on community voting, 2012 and 2011.
ERCIM Cor Baayen Award as a promising young researcher in computer science and applied mathematics, 2011.
Best Paper Award at the 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN - part of CPSWEEK), 2011.
Best Paper Award at the 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN - part of CPSWEEK), 2009.
Best Ph.D. Thesis Award granted by the European Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence, 2009.
Best Demo Award at the 5th ACM International Conference on Networked Sensing Systems (SENSYS), 2007.

Some of my works were also recognized as Best Paper Candidate at ACM EWSN 2020, ACM SENSYS 2019, ACM MOBISYS 2019, ACM/IEEE IPSN 2012, IEEE SRDS 2009,
and as Best Demo Runner-up at ACM SENSYS 2018.

What's New?

ACM MOBISYS PC co-chair!
I'm happy to be chairing the 2021 edition of ACM MOBISYS,
together with Xia Zhou! Get your papers ready!

ACM ENSSYS Best Paper Award!
The paper "Intermittence Anomalies not Considered Harmful", wins the Best Paper Award at the ACM Workshop on Energy Harvesting & Energy-Neutral Sensing Systems!

IEEE TMC Associate Editor!
I'm happy to join the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
as an Associate Editor!

MOBICOM Best Paper Award!
The paper "Hummingbird: Energy Efficient GPS Receiver for Small Satellites", out of a collaboration with our great collegues at TUD, wins the Best Paper Award at the ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking!

Scientific events I'm currently involved in:
ACM MOBISYS 2021 (PC co-chair):
ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services.
ACM MOBICOM 2021 (PC member):
ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking.
ACM/IEEE IPSN 2021 (PC member, Demo co-chair):
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks.
IEEE INFOCOM 2021 (PC member):
IEEE International Conference on International Conference on Computer Communications.
ACM EWSN 2021 (PC member):
ACM International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks.

Editorial board member:
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing: 2020 - present.
Elsevier Computer Networks: 2019 - present.
ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN): 2016 - present.

Previously, I was also involved in ACM SIGMOBILE Test of Time Award (Committee member - 2018), ACM MOBICOM (PC member - 2019, 2020, 2021), ACM SENSYS (PC co-chair - 2017; PC member - 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019), ACM/IEEE IPSN - part of CPSWEEK (PC co-chair - 2019; PC member - 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2021; poster/demo chair - 2013, 2021), ACM MOBISYS (PC co-chair - 2021; PC member - 2017), IEEE INFOCOM (PC member - 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020), IEEE ICDCS (PC member - 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020), IEEE RTSS (PC member - 2013, 2014), IEEE Percom (PC member - 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), ACM EWSN (PC co-chair - 2017; PC member - 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2020, 2021; poster/demo chair - 2011, 2016), IEEE DCOSS (PC co-chair - 2015; PC member - 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2020), IEEE SRDS (PC member - 2010, 2014, 2015), NASA/ESA AHS (PC member - 2015, 2017), and SESENA (PC co-chair - 2011; PC member - 2010, 2012), among the others.

Recent Selected Publications

These papers are representative of my current and past investigation (more under publications):

"Battery-less Zero-maintenance Embedded Sensing at the Mithræum of Circus Maximus" with Mikhail Afanasov, Naveed Bhatti, Dennis Campagna, Giacomo Caslini, Fabio Massimo Centonze, Koustabh Dolui, Andrea Maioli, Erica Barone, Muhammad Hamad Alizai, and Junaid Haroon Siddiqui.
In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SENSYS), Yokohama (Japan), November 2020.
PDF, Teaser video
"Synchronous Transmissions in Low-Power Wireless: A Survey of Communication Protocols and Network Services" with Marco Zimmerling and Silvia Santini.
In ACM Computing Surveys. Volume 53, Issue 6. December 2020.
PDF
"Hummingbird: Energy Efficient GPS Receiver for Small Satellites" with Sujay Narayana, R Venkatesha Prasad, Vijay S Rao, and T Venkata Prabhakar.
In Proceedings of the 26th ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM), London (UK), September 2020. Best Paper Award.
PDF
"Intermittent Asynchronous Peripheral Operations" with Adriano Branco, Hamad Alizai, and Junaid Siddiqui.
In Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SENSYS), New York (NY, US), November 2019. Best Paper Candidate.
PDF
"FlyZone: A Testbed for Experimenting with Aerial Drone Applications" with Mikhail Afanasov, Alessandro Djordjevic, and Feng Liu.
In Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MOBISYS), Seoul (South Korea), June 2019. Best Paper Candidate.
PDF
"HarvOS: Efficient Code Instrumentation for Transiently-powered Embedded Devices" with Naveed Bhatti.
In Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN - part of CPSWEEK), Pittsburgh (PA, US), April 2017.
PDF
"Adaptive Real-time Communication for Wireless Cyber-physical Systems" with Marco Zimmerling, Pratyush Kumar, Federico Ferrari, and Lothar Thiele.
In ACM Transactions on Cyber-physical Systems. Volume 1, Issue 2. February 2017.
PDF
"Reactive Control of Autonomous Drones" with Endri Bregu, Nicola Casamassima, Daniel Cantoni, and Kamin Whitehouse.
In Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MOBISYS), Singapore, June 2016. Best Paper Award. ACM SigMobile Research Highlight.
PDF

Personal

"Dott. Paolo Mottola" scholarship
The Italian Association for Liver Research is offering a scholarship
to carry out research on liver tumors.