Visiting PhD Student
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Human-Centered Data Analytics (HCDA) Group
Research visit carried out during the PhD programme.
About
Welcome to my personal webpage. I am a Researcher at the University of Udine and a member of the Social, Mobile, Data & Crowd Laboratory. I hold a PhD in Computer Science and Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
My research interests include Human Computation, Crowdsourcing, Information Retrieval, and Large Language Models. My current work focuses in particular on the use of crowdsourcing to address the growing challenge of misinformation.
You can download my Curriculum Vitae in English or Italian. You can also explore my PhD thesis, together with my Master’s, Bachelor’s, and High School theses (in Italian).
Interests
- Human Computation
- Crowdsourcing
- Information Retrieval
- Large Language Models
Education
PhD in Computer Science and Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Cum Laude, Nov. 2019 - Jan. 2023
University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
Master's Degree in Computer Science, 109/110, Mar. 2015 - Mar. 2018
University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
Bachelor's Degree in Web Technologies and Multimedia, 101/110, Oct. 2011 - Mar. 2015
University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
Technical High School Diploma in Computer Science, 77/100, Oct. 2006 - Jun. 2011
I.S.I.S. Raimondo D’Aronco, Gemona del Friuli, Italy.
Visits
Experience
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics (DMIF), University of Udine
Research contract pursuant to Article 22 of Law 240/2010, under the University Regulation approved on April 30, 2025.
Research on information and disinformation, with a focus on the automatic evaluation of information truthfulness, experimentation with detection models, and the definition of evaluation metrics.
Self-employed Worker
Department of Economic and Statistical Sciences (DIES), University of Udine
Design, implementation, and evaluation of a conversational system for accessing regional public healthcare services.
Activities included prototype development, experimental evaluation, and data analysis within the interdepartmental project “Governance and Digital Public Administration”.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics (DMIF), University of Udine
Research activity within the PRIN 2022 project “The Measure of Truth: An Evaluation-Centered Machine-Human Hybrid Framework for Assessing Information Truthfulness” (Code 20227F2ZN3, CUP G53D23002800006), funded by the European Union, NextGenerationEU, PNRR M4 C2 I1.1.
Definition of an evaluation framework for misinformation detection systems, including the creation of labelled datasets, bias prevention, and truthfulness-oriented evaluation metrics.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Economic and Statistical Sciences (DIES), University of Udine
Research on e-government applications based on conversational agents for the Italian public administration, with particular emphasis on the healthcare domain.
Self-employed Worker
Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture (DPIA), University of Udine
Development of a web application supporting the comparability and reproducibility of research results in combinatorial optimization.
Research Fellow
Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics (DMIF), University of Udine
Research project co-funded by SISSA Medialab on the design, implementation, and evaluation of an ecosystem providing an alternative to traditional peer review in scholarly publishing.
Self-employed Worker
Archeido S.r.l.
Development, as a full-stack developer, of a web application for the management and visualization of financial assets.
Self-employed Worker
Datamantix S.r.l.
Design, development, and maintenance of several web applications and a chatbot as a full-stack developer.
Self-employed Worker
Troublezine
Design, development, and maintenance of a blog on music news and events as a full-stack web developer.
Bibliometrics
| Google Scholar | Scopus | ACM Digital Library | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publications | 38 | 31 | 26 |
| Citations | 700 | 348 | 191 |
| h-index | 14 | 9 | – |
| i10-index | 15 | – | – |
Last update: August 9, 2026
Publications
View details
Presentations
Crowdsourced Fact-Checking for Misinformation: A Journey Through Nine Years of Research (2018–2026)
Workshop Talk - Workshop "AI and Disinformation", held as part of the 6th National CINI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Ital-IA 2026). June 18, 2026, Rome, Italy.
Crowdsourced Keypoint Matching for Region of Interest Identification in Cross-Stain Whole Slide Image Registration
Poster - 22nd European Congress on Digital Pathology (ECDP 2026). June 18, 2026, Graz, Austria.
Beyond Seeing Is Believing: On Crowdsourced Detection of Audiovisual Deepfakes
Workshop Talk - The 6th Workshop on Reducing Online Misinformation through Credible Information Retrieval (ROMCIR 2026), held as part of The 48th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2026). Delft, The Netherlands.
Analyzing AI Evaluation Benchmarks Through Information Retrieval and Network Science
Poster - The 48th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2026). Delft, The Netherlands.
Large Language Models as Assessors: On the Impact of Relevance Scales
Poster - The 48th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2026). Delft, The Netherlands.
Activity
Organizational Roles
- 49th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2026). Tutorials Chair
- Workshop “AI, Misinformation and Disinformation”, held as part of the 5th National CINI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Ital-IA 2025), Trieste, 23 Jun 2025. Organizer
- 21st Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries (IRCDL 2025), Udine, 20–21 Feb 2025. Website Chair. Website
- 14th Italian Information Retrieval Workshop (IIR 2024), Udine, 5–6 Sep 2024. Organizer and Website Chair. Website
- CARE: Conversational Agents and Responsible Ethics in Healthcare Workshop, held as part of the European Federation of Medical Informatics Special Topic Conference 2023 (EFMI STC 2023), Turin, 27 Oct 2023. Organizer
- Fourth Symposium on Biases in Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (BHCC 2022), online, 12–13 Oct 2022. Organizer, Proceedings Chair, and Website Chair
Program Committee Memberships
- 15th Italian Information Retrieval Workshop (IIR 2025), Cagliari, 3–5 Sep 2025. Full and Short Papers tracks
- 12th AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP 2024), Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Full Papers track
- 47th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2024), Washington, DC, USA. Full and Short Papers tracks
- 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2023), Dublin, Ireland. Short Papers track
- 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2022), Madrid, Spain. Short Papers track
- Third Symposium on Biases in Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (BHCC 2021), online. Program Committee Member
Reviewing Activities
- 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2026), Budapest, Hungary
- 19th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2026)
- Umanistica Digitale - Italian Journal of Digital Humanities, ISSN 2532-8816, 2025. Website
- International Journal on Digital Libraries (IJDL), 2025. Website
- Data Science and Engineering, 2025. Website
- Information Processing & Management, 2023. Review activity recorded on ORCID
- Scientific Reports, 2023. Website
- 13th Italian Information Retrieval Workshop (IIR 2023), Pisa, Italy
- Information Processing & Management, 2022
- 10th AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP 2022), online
- Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2022), Bologna, Italy
- 44th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2022), Stavanger, Norway
- Second Symposium on Biases in Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (BHCC 2021), Delft, Netherlands, online
- 30th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2021), online
- 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT 2021), online
- 29th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2020), Galway, Ireland, online
- 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT 2020), online
- 15th Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries (IRCDL 2019), Pisa, Italy
Supervision and Mentoring
- Thesis supervision: 1 BSc thesis
- Thesis co-supervision: 13 MSc and 16 BSc theses
Counts include completed and ongoing theses. Additional mentoring activities include advanced student projects, seminars, course assignments, and internships.
Affiliations
- Member of the Social, Mobile, Data & Crowd Laboratory (SMDC), University of Udine. Website
Teaching
Web Applications
Course offered within the Master's Degree in Management Engineering at the University of Udine
Information Analysis and Processing for Training
Courses offered within the Bachelor's Degree in Sports Science and the Master's Degree in Sciences and Techniques of Preventive and Adapted Physical Activities at the University of Udine
Social Computing
Course offered within the Bachelor's Degree in Internet of Things, Big Data, and Machine Learning at the University of Udine
Honors & Grants
- PhD Award 2024. Award from the University of Udine for the best PhD thesis in the scientific area for 2023. Thesis title: In Crowd Veritas: Leveraging Human Intelligence to Fight Misinformation.
- Student Grant. 15th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2022), Phoenix, USA. Conference registration waiver provided by WSDM. Held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Student Grant. 29th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2020), Galway, Ireland. Conference registration waiver provided by CIKM. Held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Student Volunteer. 43rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2020), Xi’an, China. Conference registration waiver provided by SIGIR. Held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Contact
- michael.soprano@uniud.it
- Via delle Scienze 206, Udine (Italy), 33100
- Rizzi Building, 2° Floor, South Node, Lab SMDC (LC2-04-DE), A2 32 Room