Stefano Bistarelli is one of the most qualified Italian experts in the field of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, with a particular interest in Argumentation, Constraint Programming, security and game theory. He is currently Associate Professor (with full professor qualification) at the University of Perugia, where he moved after a dense educational background and with a quick career progression. 

He started his education at the University of Pisa, where he obtained two master degrees in computer Science (Information Science, and Informatics), both with a score of 110/110 cum laude; then in 2001, again at the University of Pisa, a PhD in Computer Science. 
His research has always had a strong international and multidisciplinary horizon, starting already from his doctoral thesis, appreciated and awarded as the best doctoral thesis, by both the Italian section of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA). Later, in 2004, an extended version of his doctoral work has been published as a volume in the Springer Jacketed LNCS series with the title "Semirings for Soft Constraint Solving and Programming". This book represent at today an important reference for those who are deeply involved in the (Soft) Constraint Programming area.

After a fellowship at the University of Padua, where he investigated on the relationship between knowledge representation and computer security, he moved for a PostDoc position in Computer Security at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa: the brilliant results accrued in this field earned him the appointment, by the IIT-CNR of Pisa as the Italian candidate for the Cor Baayen Award (2002). 
In September 2002 he became a researcher at the University "G. d'Annunzio "of Chieti-Pescara and, immediately after, associate professor (September 2005). In 2008 he moved to the University of Perugia, his current affiliation.

Its scientific activity in the Knowledge Representation and IT security area, is acknowledged internationally and he has been invited/keynote or tutorial speakers in Conferences and Workshops (to cite some, at the International Workshop on Views On Designing Complex Architectures (VODCA 2004), at the International Conference on Risks and Security of Internet and Systems (CRiSIS 2012), and at the Constraint Programming and Decision Making Workshop (CoProD 2014)). He also won a Best Paper Award with the work "A Formal and Practical Framework for Constraint-Based Routing", received at the International Conference on Networking (ICN 2008). Many was also the presentation of accepted paper in scientific conferences of the area (SAC, CSCLP, CP, CILC, ARES, ECAI, ICTAI, ICLP. ICTCS, IJCAI, PADL, FLAIRS, COMMA, FAST, ATC, AVBPA, JELIA, KDID, KES, LPNMR, CLIMA, EUROCAST, PKDD, CSCLP, DALT, PST, LPAR, ESOP, MICAI, AT, COORDINATION, FACS, POLICY, SARA, SEFM, SAFECOMP, ICN, TAFA, CRiSIS, WADS, WADT, IPOM, ISAIM, AAAI, ITASEC, …).

Since 1998 his research work has contributed to the growth the research community in the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and Security fields: from that date, in fact, he played the role of referees for many scientific journals (ENTCS, TCS, Fuzzy Systems IEEE, JAIR, aI, AIJ, IJAIT, Algorithmica, Constraint, Joh, …) and of chair or of PC member in numerous, prestigious conferences (CP, IJCAI, FLAIR, SAC, SAFECOMP, ERCIM CSCLP, ECAI, PPDP, PKDD, PADL, ILP, ESORICS, ICTAI, ESOP, …). Some of the chairing activity also implied editorial work publishing in the Journal of Heuristics, TCS, Fundam. Inform. and JETAI.

Stefano Bistarelli is active in research also outside his university: since 2002 he is associated Researcher of the IIT-CNR and part of the GNCS-INDAM research groups; From 2013 to 2015 he was Associated Researcher of the Information Society Technologies (IST) project funded by the EU as Integrated Project (IP) in the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) as part of the Future Emerging Technologies Proactive Initiative (FET Proactive) ASCENS; finally since 2014, its activities in the Security field has resulted in the creation and direction of the Perugia node of the CINI National CyberSecurity Laboratory.

Recently he was awarded the rank of Senior Member of the 'Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a degree that is awarded to only 8% of the more than 430,000 members of the International Association of reference, and in addition invited to be part of the Knowledge representation and Reasoning on the Artificial Intelligence Technical Committee of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). 
As a proof of his high quality research profile and of the scientific relevance of his production, Stefano Bistarelli counts more than 150 publications listed in DBLP (http://www.dblp.org/), and more than 180 listed in Google Scholar.
Their results are particularly appreciated as confirmed by the high number of citations (more than 3700 citation and an h-index of 27) in Scholar.

His long experience in the education and formation field inspired many young students and researcher. He has teaching duties since 2000, and 10 years of experience in participating to Doctoral and PhD activities. Since 2006 he supervised Phd Students in the field of Computer Science at the schools of IMT Lucca, and University of Chieti-Pescara, Perugia and Camerino.
He was also involved as external examiner for the final examination of Phd students of the École Polytechnique in Losanne and Paris, and of the University of Bologna, University of Cagliari and University of Calabria. 

Stefano Bistarelli has more than 15 years of experience and success in participating in Italian and International research project. Moreover, since 2005 he started to lead research units in PRIN (Italian National Research Project), to participate as Principal Investigators in several Italian projects (ex60%, CCOS-FLOSS, INDAM-GNCS, …) and as work-package/unit/task leaders in International Projects (Enterprise Ireland International Collaboration Programmes, COST Actions, …). He has also active and consolidated collaborations with SMEs for industrial and applied research, creating also his own small company.

The participation in research project is not only constrained at University of Perugia site, but is open and have involved several research centre in Europe and abroad, where Stefano Bistarelli has been invited and spent some time for research visits; to name a few: INRIA Paris; IC-Park Imperial College London; Department of Languages and Computer Systems, Barcelona; Institute for Logic, Language and Computation Amsterdam; Institute of Computer Science LMU Monaco; S.R.I. San Francisco; Chinese University of Hong Kong, Cork Constraint Computational Centre and Department of Computer Science, Cork, Ireland, and recently University of Texas at El Paso). 

Expert in the review of research project, he was member of the MIUR FAR (Fondo Agevolazioni alla Ricerca) expert pool, reviewer for SIR (Scientific Independence of young Researchers), PRIN. He is currently reviewer for Smart Cities and Communities and Social Innovation projects, ETS for AAL European projects, member of REPRISE (register of scientific experts set up at the MIUR) for the sections 1) Basic research, 2) Competitive industrial research and social development, 3) Dissemination of scientific culture).
He is active in the Italian Theoretical Computer Science Community (vice-president of the Italian Chapter of the EATCS) and in his university, participating to many teaching, research, administrative and organizational committees.