On the occasion of his visit to Singapore, Giordano Bruno Guerri, President and Director of the Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation, the home of Gabriele d’Annunzio, announced that the prestigious Genio Vagante 2023 (Wandering Genius) award will be awarded to Erik Cambria, an Italian researcher at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore.
The announcement took place during a seminar held at the Italian Embassy in Singapore, on the study of the relationship between language and sentiment, starting in this case from the correspondence exchanges of Gabriele d’Annunzio and reaching the current ones, on websites online and social media.
“A museum cannot be just a place of conservation” said Giordano Bruno Guerri, “it must also be an engine of cultural development. Culture and also new technologies to which the Vittoriale is being applied, for example with the recent 3D mapping of the interiors. This is the old and new face of Italy that we bring to Asia “.
The Genio Vagante (Wandering Genius) award, represented by a sculpture created by the master Ugo Riva, was established by Il Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation as a recognition for the scientists who bring Italian science and culture to the world, and therefore represent creativity, professionalism but also Italy’s skills education. The award is in its fourth year and was previously awarded to three distinguished scientists for their research activities in North America.
“For the first time” said the Italian Ambassador to Singapore Mario Vattani “the award takes the path of the East, as a sign of the evolution in global balance also in the field of scientific research and technology. In particular Singapore is increasingly assuming a leading role in the S&T sector thanks also to the large and highly qualified presence of Italian researchers, of whom we are proud”.
During his dialogue with Giordano Bruno Guerri, Prof. Cambria has shown how the recent use of artificial intelligence makes it possible to have an effective emotional interpretation that can be used in the most varied fields from marketing, to politics and finance.
Erik Cambria is Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore where he also holds the position of Provost’s Chair in Computer Science and Engineering.
He is the founder of SenticNet, a company that offers B2B sentiment analysis services. Prior to joining NTU, he worked at Microsoft Research Asia (Beijing) and HP Labs India (Bangalore) and earned his PhD through a joint program between the University of Stirling and the MIT Media Lab after graduating from University of Genoa. His research focuses on neuro-symbolic Artificial Intelligence (AI) for explainable natural language processing in domains such as sentiment analysis, dialogue systems and financial forecasting. He has already received other awards, such as the IEEE Outstanding Career Award. He was ranked among the top 10 persons to watch in the AI field and appeared on Forbes as one of 5 persons building our AI future. He was co-supervisor of the first graduate student in Italy in Artificial Intelligence. (ANSA).
