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 Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and a Senior Researcher at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. My research is about designing, building, and validating distributed software systems to make the "Internet of Things" a reality!

Awards and Recognitions

Recipient of the ERCIM Cor Baayen Award as a promising young researcher
in computer science.
Listed amongst Postscapes' Internet of Things Top 100 Thinkers , also based
on community voting.
Recipient of Best Paper Award at the 10th ACM/IEEE Int. Conference on
Information Processing (IPSN), 2011.
Recipient of Best Paper Award at the 8th ACM/IEEE Int. Conference on
Information Processing (IPSN), 2009.
Recipient of the European EWSN/CONET Best Ph.D. Thesis Award granted by the Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence, 2009.
Recipient of Best Demo Award at the 5th ACM Int. Conference on Networked
Sensing Systems (SENSYS), 2007.
Nominated as Best Paper Candidate at the 28th IEEE Int. Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, 2009.

What's New?

Best Paper Runner-up at IPSN/IP!
Our paper "pTunes: Runtime Parameter Adaptation for Low-power MAC Protocols" was nominated Best Paper Runner-up at the 11th ACM/IEEE Int. Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN/IP) in Beijing (China)!

Informatics Europe Curriculum Award!
The Informatics Europe Curriculum Award recognizes outstanding European educational initiatives that improve the quality of informatics teaching and the attractiveness of the discipline. This year the Award will be devoted to curricula initiatives in the area of
Embedded and Mobile Computing!

MakeSense paper accepted at ICSE NIER!
Our paper describing the makeSense framework "Towards Business Processes Orchestrating the Physical Enterprise with Wireless Sensor Networks" has been accepted at the New Ideas and Emerging Results track at the 34th ACM/IEEE Int. Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)!

PLDI Tutorial!
I will be giving a tutorial titled "Programming Abstractions and Languages for Wireless Sensor Networks: Fundamental Concepts and State of the Art" at the 33rd SIGPLAN Int. Conf. on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI) - next June in Beijing (China). This year, PLDI is also co-located with ECOOP, LCTES, and ISMM!

Scientific events I'm currently involved in:
ACM SENSYS 2012 (PC member):
10th International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems.
ACM/IEEE IPSN 2013 (Demo chair):
12nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks.
IEEE Percom 2013 (PC member):
10th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications.
EWSN 2013 (PC member, Publicity chair):
10th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks.
Internet of Things 2012 (PC member):
3rd International Conference on Internet of Things for Industry and Academia.
IEEE CPSCOM 2012 (PC member):
3rd IEEE International Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing.
IEEE LCN 2012 (PC member):
37th IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks.
SESENA 2012 (Organizer, PC member):
3rd International Workshop on Software Engineering for Sensor Network Applications.
IEEE SENSEAPP 2012 (PC member):
7th IEEE International Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications.

Previously, I was also involved in ACM SENSYS (PC member), ACM/IEEE IPSN (PC member), IEEE ICDCS (PC member), IEEE Percom (PC member), EWSN (PC member, poster/demo chair), IEEE DCOSS (PC member), IEEE SRDS (PC member), and SESENA (PC co-chair, PC member), among the others.

Recent Selected Publications

The following papers are representative of my current investigation and of projects I'm involved in (more under publications):

"pTunes: Runtime Parameter Adaptation for Low-power MAC Protocols" with Federico Ferrari, Marco Zimmerling, Thiemo Voigt, and Lothar Thiele.
In Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN/IP), Beijing (China), April 2012. Best Paper Runner-up.
PDF
"Strawman: Resolving Collisions in Bursty Low-Power Wireless Networks" with Fredrik Osterlind, Thiemo Voigt, Nicolas Tsiftes, and Adam Dunkels.
In Proceedings of the 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN/SPOTS), Beijing (China), April 2012.
PDF
"Programming Wireless Sensor Networks: Fundamental Concepts and
State of the Art" with Gian Pietro Picco.
In ACM Computing Surveys. Volume 43, Issue 3. April 2011.
The paper is also the basis of our tutorial on WSN programming.
PDF
"Is There Light at the Ends of the Tunnel? Wireless Sensor Networks for Adaptive Lighting in Road Tunnels" with Matteo Ceriotti, Michele Corrà, Leandro D'Orazio, Roberto Doriguzzi, Daniele Facchin, Stefan Guna, Gian Paolo Jesi, Renato Lo Cigno, Amy L. Murphy, Massimo Pescalli, Gian Pietro Picco, Denis Pregnolato, and Carloalberto Torghele.
In Proceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN/SPOTS), Chicago (IL, USA), April 2011. Best Paper Award.
PDF
"Not All Wireless Sensor Networks Are Created Equal: A Comparative Study On Tunnels" with Gian Pietro Picco, Matteo Ceriotti, Stefan Guna, and Amy L. Murphy.
In ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. Volume 7, Issue 2. August 2010.
PDF, Connectivity traces
"Programming Storage-centric Sensor Networks with Squirrel".
In Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN/IP), Stockholm (Sweden), April 2010.
PDF
"Monitoring Heritage Buildings with Wireless Sensor Networks:
The Torre Aquila Deployment" with Matteo Ceriotti, Gian Pietro Picco, Amy L. Murphy, Stefan Guna, Michele Corrà, Matteo Pozzi, Daniele Zonta, and Paolo Zanon.
In Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN/SPOTS), San Francisco (CA, USA), April 2009. Best Paper Award.
PDF, Award page, Publicity on WSNBlog I, Publicity on WSNBlog II

Personal

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