He has had the scientific responsibility of the following research
activities.
Project ADAM of the European Union for early automatic diagnosis of melanoma.
Project "Geometry and topology of robot vision" of the Italian Space Agency.
Agreement with Elsag (Genova, I) for research in robot vision.
Agreement with ENEL-CRA for research in robot navigation.
Project of the Univ. of Bologna "Advanced aids for handicapped people".
Mathematical part of the project "Integrated devices for registering the thermal history of drug" within the HighMech initiative of MIUR.
Research commissioned to ARCES by CaMi srl on retrieval of dermatologic images by persistent homology.
The activity has expressed itself in the just listed initiatives, in the supervision of theses and mainly in the redaction of the
separately listed publications.
A first part of those papers deals with the topology of piecewise-linear
manifolds, by means of the concepts of "contracted triangulation" and "crystallization";
three papers treat the relations between groups and graphs.
A second part is devoted to geometric and topological methods for computer
vision: projective geometry for pose estimation of objects, differential
geometry for robot navigation, persistent homology for shape recognition.
RESEARCH SUPERVISION.
Since 1981 M. Ferri temporarily supervised the research of G. De Paris,
A. Donati and A. Cere` and (also for their Ph. D. research activity) of Drs. P. Frosini,
M. Mulazzani, M. d'Amico, D. Giorgi, B. Di Fabio, N. Cavazza, A. Mella.
OTHER ACTIVITIES OF SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER.
Scientific and teaching collaboration at the Mathematics Institute of the
Erlangen-Nürnberg University (Sept. 1, 1979 - March 3, 1980).
Course of Differential Topology of The National Institute of High Mathematics
"F. Severi" (Bologna, academic year 1981-'82).
Summer course of Combinatorial Topology and research activity at the
Pernambuco Federal University (Recife, BR, Jan. 3 - Feb 3, 1984).
Lectures of Algebraic Topology at the Ph. D. courses of Florence (acad.
year 1985-'86) and of Bologna (since the academic year 1988-'89).
Ph. D. course in Vision Mathematics at the University of Nantes (F), July 2000.
Lectures at the European Ph. D. course in Information Technology of ARCES, Bologna
(academic years 2004-'05 and 2005-'06).
Member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Mathematical Union for
the periods 2000-2003 and 2006-2009.
He was:
Co-founder and member of the steering committee of the ACAT Project (Applied and Computational Algebraic Topology) of the European Science Foundation.
Member of the organizing or scientific committee of various national and international conferences.
Member of several committees for the assignment of the PhD title in Mathematics and in Computer Science in Italy and abroad.
Member of several committees for the assignment of university positions.
Reviewer for Zentralblatt MATH and for Mathematical Reviews.
He still is:
Referee for several periodicals of mathematics and computer vision.
Member of the Editorial Board of the association "MaddMaths!", that runs a site of mathematical popularization.
JOBS.
Oct. 15, 1974 - May 15, 1980 (After the national service accomplished
as a cadet and as Second Leutenant of Heavy Artillery) Various grants
from CNR and Ministry of Education, at the Universities of Modena and Bologna.
May 16, 1980 - Febr. 1, 1981 Assistant of Algebra at the Science Faculty
of Modena University.
Febr. 2, 1981 - Oct. 31, 1983 Full professor of Geometry at the Engineering
Faculty of Napoli University "Federico Secondo".
Nov. 1, 1983 - Oct. 31, 2020 Transferred to Bologna University, Engineering Faculty. Member
of the Department of Mathematics.
"Laurea" (at that time the only university degree) in Mathematics obtained
at the University of Modena on June 27, 1973 cum laude (Thesis: "Planarity
of graphs associated with groups"; advisor: G. Gemignani). While preparing
the thesis, he received a grant from the CNR (National Research Council).
M. Sc. Course in Mathematics at the University of Warwick (GB): October
1976 - September 1977 (Dissertation: "Equivalences of Heegaard splittings";
advisor: C. Rourke; with honours). He received a grant from the CNR for studies abroad.