Nicola Bena

I am a Postdoc at Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. My research interest are in the area of distributed systems and machine learning security. In particular, I work in the field of security assurance, focusing on certification techniques for new generation distributed systems, at the crossroad of cloud, edge, IoT and ML.

I am a member of SESAR Lab.

I participate in the projects MUSA and PALM.

Education

  • PhD in Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano (January 2024)
  • PhD Student (XXXVI cycle), Università degli Studi di Milano (November 2020 – November 2023)
  • MSc in Cybersecurity, with full marks and honors, Università degli Studi di Milano (October 2018 – April 2020)
  • BSc in Computer Systems and Network Security, with full marks and honors, Università degli Studi di Milano (October 2015 – October 2018)

Visiting at International Research Centers

  • February – April 2023: visiting at Center for Cyber physical Security, Khalifa University (visiting scholar), Abu Dhabi, UAE. The research activity, in collaboration with Prof. Chan Yeob Yeun, aimed to design new methodologies to increase the robustness of machine learning against poisoning attacks.
  • June – August 2023: visiting at LIRIS Lab, INSA Lyon (visiting scholar), Lyon, France. The research activity, in collaboration with Prof. Chirine Ghedira-Guegan, Prof. Nadia Bennani, and Dr. Genoveva Vargas-Solar, aimed to define new methodologies for trust management in modern distributed systems.

Editorial Activities

Co-editor (guest editor) of the following special issues in international journals:

  • Special Issue on “Towards the Next Frontier in Data Management: Data Spaces and Data Governance”, Data Science and Engineering (with C. Diamantini, S. Distefano, L. Romano, A. Tzouganatou)

Review editor of the following international journals:

  • Frontiers in Big Data

Reviewer for the following journals:

  • PLOS ONE
  • International Journal of Intelligent Systems
  • ACM Computing Surveys
  • IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence
  • Computers in Biology and Medicine
  • SN Computer Science
  • IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing
  • Computers and Electrical Engineering
  • IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
  • Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments
  • IEEE Transactions on Services Computing
  • Computers & Security
  • IEEE Access
  • Mobile Information Systems
  • Annals of Telecommunications

Conference and Review Activities

Program chair of the following conferences:

  • 3rd Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science (ITADATA 2024), September 2024, Pisa, Italy.
  • ICWS Workshop on Services Regulation & Governance (SRG 2024), workshop part of IEEE ICWS 2024, July 2024, Shenzhen, China.
  • 2nd Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science (ITADATA 2023), September 2023, Naples, Italy.

Member of the organizing committee of the following conferences:

  • 2nd International Conference on Machine Intelligence and Digital Applications (MIDA 2025), Ningbo, China, April 2025.

Member of the program committee of the following conferences:

  • IEEE 6th International Conference on Computer Science and Communication Technology (IEEE ICCSCT 2025), Wuhan, China, August 2025.
  • 2025 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (IEEE CSR 2025), Chania, Greece, August 2025.
  • 2nd International Conference on Communication, Information and Digital Technologies (CIDT 2025), Singapore, June 2025.
  • 15th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2025), Porto, Portugal, April 2025.
  • The 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (ACM SAC 2025), Catania, Italy, March – April 2025.
  • 2025 7th International Symposium on Computational and Business Intelligence (ISCBI 2025), Macau, China, February 2025.
  • 2025 7th International Conference on Software Engineering and Computer Science (CSECS 2025), Taicang, China, January 2025.
  • 21st IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (IEEE UIC 2024), Denarau Island, Fiji, December 2024.
  • 22nd IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (IEEE EUC 2024), Sanya, China, December 2024.
  • 27th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (IEEE CSE 2024), Sanya, China, December 2024.
  • 23rd IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering 2024 (IEEE TrustCom 2024), Sanya, China, December 2024.
  • 2024 IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communication (IEEE HPCC 2024), Wuhan, China, December 2024.
  • 25th International Web Information Systems Engineering conference (WISE 2024), Doha, Qatar, December 2024.
  • 7th International Conference on Machine Learning for Networking (MLN’2024), Reims, France, November 2024.
  • 2024 6th International Conference on Advanced Information Science and System (AISS 2024), Sanya, China, November 2024.
  • 12th Workshop on New Frontiers in Mining Complex Patterns (NFMCP 2024), workshop part of ECML-PKDD 2024, Vilnius, Lithuania, September 2024.
  • 2024 IEEE CSR Workshop on Synthetic Data Generation (SDG 2024) workshop part of IEEE CSR 2024, London, UK, September 2024.
  • 6th International Conference on Science of Cyber Security (SciSec 2024), Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2024.
  • 8th IEEE International Workshop on Big Data And IoT Security in Smart Computing (BITS2024) During SMARTCOMP 2024 (BITS 2024), workshop part of IEEE SMARTCOMP 2024, Osaka, Japan, June-July 2024.
  • IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2024), Shenzhen, China, July 2024.
  • A Human-Centric Perspective of Explainability, Interpretability and Resilience in Computer Vision, special session in IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IEEE IJCNN 2024), Yokohama, Japan, June–July 2024.
  • 2024 5th International Conference on Computing, Networks and Internet of Things (CNIOT 2024), Tokyo, Japan, May 2024.
  • 2024 International Conference on Communication, Information and Digital Technologies (ICCIDT 2024), Wuhan, China, May 2024.
  • 14th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2024), Angers, France, May 2024.
  • Fifteenth International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization (CLOUD COMPUTING 2024), Venice, Italy, April 2024.
  • 21th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications (IEEE ISPA 2023), Wuhan, China, December 2023.
  • 14th IEEE International Conference On Cloud Computing Technology And Science (CloudCom 2023), Naples, Italy, December 2023.
  • 22nd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (IEEE TrustCom 2023), Exeter, UK, November 2023.
  • 2023 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (IEEE CSR 2023), Venice, Italy, July – August 2023.
  • IEEE Cloud Summit 2023, July 2023, Baltimora, MD, USA.
  • IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2023), Chicago, Illinois, USA, July 2023.
  • 7th IEEE International Workshop on Big Data And IoT Security in Smart Computing (BITS2023) During SMARTCOMP 2023 (IEEE BITS 2023), workshop part of IEEE SMARTCOMP 2023, Nashville, TN, USA, June 2023.
  • International Workshop on AI-driven Trustworthy, Secure, and Privacy-Preserving Computing (AidTSP 2023), New York, USA, May 2023.
  • 4th International Conference on Computing, Networks and Internet of Things (CNIOT 2023), Xiamen, China, May 2023.
  • 13th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2023), Prague, Czech Republic, April 2023.
  • IEEE Global Communications Conference (IEEE GLOBECOM 2022), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, December 2022.
  • 5th International Conference on Machine Learning for Networking (MLN’2022), Paris, France, November 2022.
  • IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (IEEE TRUSTCOM 2022), Wuhan, China, October 2022.
  • 2022 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (IEEE CSR 2022), Virtual, July 2022.
  • IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2022), Barcelona, Spain, July 2022.
  • 6th IEEE International Workshop on Big Data and IoT Security in Smart Computing (IEEE BITS 2022), workshop part of IEEE SMARTCOMP 2022, Espoo, Finland, June 2022.
  • 3rd International Conference on Computing, Networks and Internet of Things (CNIOT 2022), Qingdao, China, May 2022.
  • 12th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2022), Virtual, April 2022.
  • IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2021), Chicago, IL, USA, September 2021.
  • 5th International Workshop on Big Data And IoT Security in Smart Computing (IEEE BITS 2021), workshop part of IEEE SMARTCOMP 2021, Irvine, CA, USA, August 2021.
  • 2nd International Conference on Computing, Networks and Internet of Things (CNIOT 2021), Beijing. China May 2021.
  • 3rd International Conference on Machine Learning for Networking (MLN’2020), Paris, France, November 2020.

Sub-reviewer for the following conferences:

  • The 7th International Conference on Attacks and Defenses for Internet-of-Things (ADIoT 2024), Hangzhou, China, December 2024.
  • 20th International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS 2024), Jaipur, India, December 2024.
  • International Conference on Security for Information Technology and Communications (SecITC 2024), Bucharest, Romania, November 2024.
  • 39th International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (IFIP SEC 2024), Edinburgh, UK, June 2024.
  • 18th International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS 2022), Tirupati, India, December 2022.
  • 37th International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (IFIP SEC 2022), Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2022.
  • 37th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (ACM SAC 2022), Brno, Czech Republic, April 2022.
  • 14th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (IEEE/ACM UCC 2021), Leicester, UK, December 2021.
  • 6th International Conference on Systems, Control and Communications (ICSCC 2021), Chongqing, China, October 2021.
  • 36th International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (IFIP SEC 2021), Oslo, Norway, June 2021.
  • 19th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (IEEE TrustCom 2020), Guangzhou, China, December 2020-January 2021.
  • International Conference on Security and Privacy in Digital Economy (SPDE 2020), October-November 2020, Quzhou, Zhejiang, China.
  • IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2020) Beijing, China, October 2020.
  • 11th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (IEEE CloudCom 2019), Sidney, Australia, December 2019.

Publication chair of the following conferences:

  • 1st Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science (ITADATA 2022), Milan, Italy, September 2022.

Publicity chair of the following conferences:

  • IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (IEEE CLOUD 2024), Shenzhen, China, July 2024.
  • IEEE International Conference on Web Services (IEEE ICWS 2024), Shenzhen, China, July 2024.
  • 1st Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science (ITADATA 2022), Milan, Italy, September 2022.
  • Big Data and Data Science for Next-Generation Distributed Systems (BDDS 2022), workshop part of IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2022) Padua, Italy, July 2022.
  • IEEE World Congress on Services (IEEE SERVICES 2022), Barcelona, Spain, July 2022.
  • IEEE World Congress on Services (IEEE SERVICES 2021), Chicago, IL, USA, July 2021.

Awards

  • Winner of the prize Best Student Paper within the conference SECRYPT 2020 (part of 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE)). Paper entitled: Stay Thrifty, Stay Secure: A VPN-based Assurance Framework for Hybrid Systems. Coauthors: M. Anisetti, C.A. Ardagna, E. Damiani.

Teaching Activities

Lectures

I held the following seminars within BSc/MSc degrees at italian and international universities:

  • December 2023: Anonimity in the Network: From Cookies to Tor, lecture within the course Computer networks, BSc degree in Computer Science, Universitàù degli Studi di Napoli “Parthenope” (Anonimato in Rete: Dai Cookie a Tor – in Italian)
  • June 2023: Moon Cloud: a Distributed System for Security Assurance, lecture within the course Cloud computing technologies, MSc in Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano
  • April 2023: Assurance-based Security Governance for ICT Systems, lecture within the course Cybersecurity seminars, MSc in Cybersecurity, Sapienza Università di Roma (with M. Anisetti)

Tutoring Activities

Tutor for the following courses within the BSc in Computer Systems and Network Security, Università degli Studi di Milano:

  • 2023-2024: Reti di calcolatori (laboratorio) (Computer networks (lab) – in Italian)
  • 2021-2022: Reti di calcolatori (laboratorio) (Computer networks (lab) – in Italian)
  • 2020-2021: Reti di calcolatori (laboratorio) (Computer networks – in Italian)
  • 2019-2020: Reti di calcolatori (laboratorio) (Computer networks (lab) – in Italian)
  • 2019-2020: Progettazione model-driven del software (Model-driven software design – in Italian)
  • 2019-2020: Progettazione di software sicuro (Secure software design (lab) – in Italian)

Tutor for the following courses within the BSc in Computer Systems and Network Security (online edition), Università degli Studi di Milano:

  • 2023-2024: Reti di calcolatori (Computer networks – in Italian)
  • 2022-2023: Reti di calcolatori (Computer networks – in Italian)
  • 2021-2022: Reti di calcolatori (Computer networks – in Italian)
  • 2020-2021: Reti di calcolatori (Computer networks – in Italian)
  • 2019-2020: Reti di calcolatori (Computer networks – in Italian)

Teaching in Postgraduate Courses

Teaching in the following lectures within postgraduate courses at Università degli Studi di Milano:

  • November 2024: Attacks to data: the new frontier of cybercrime in the era of big data and artificial intelligence, in Corso di Perfezionamento in Criminalità Informatica e Investigazioni Digitali: Il fattore umano, with C. A. Ardagna (Postgradute advanced course in Cybercrime and Digital Investigations: The human factor – in Italian)
  • November 2023: AI: Poisoning Attacks and Countermeasures, in Corso di Perfezionamento in Criminalità Informatica e Investigazioni Digitali: Intelligenza Artificiale, attacchi, crimini informatici, investigazioni e aspetti etico-sociali, with C. A. Ardagna (Postgraduate advanced course in Cybercrime and Digital Investigations: Artificial Intelligence, attacks, cybercrimes, investigations, and socio-ethical aspects – in Italian)
  • June 2022: Il metaverso da un punto di vista tecnico e informatico, in Corso di perfezionamento in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence e Piattaforme – Aspetti tecnici e giuridici connessi all’utilizzo dei dati e alla loro tutela, with C. A. Ardagna (Metaverse from a technical and computer science point of view, in Postgraduate advanced course in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Platforms – Technical and legal aspects related to the use of data and its protection – in Italian)
  • December 2021: L’idea di anonimato e il presentarsi in rete anonimi, in Corso di Perfezionamento online in Criminalità Informatica e Investigazioni Digitali: Le procedure di investigazione e di rimozione dei contenuti digitali. Pornografia, proprietà intellettuale, odio e terrorismo, oblio, tutela della reputazione, with C. A. Ardagna (Anonymity and the idea of being anonymous in the network, in Postgraduate advanced course in Cybercrime and Digital Investigations: Procedures of investigation and removal of digital contents. Pornography, intellectual property, hate an terrorism, oblivion, reputation protection – in Italian)
  • October 2020: I filtri e l’utilizzo di strumenti quali VPN e Tor, in Corso di Perfezionamento online in Criminalità Informatica e Investigazioni Digitali: La digital forensics sulle infedeltà del partner, del dipendente, del professionista e sulle frodi nelle piattaforme digitali, with C. A. Ardagna (Filters and the usage of tools such as VPN and Tor in *Postgraduate advanced course in Cybercrime and Digital Investigations: Digital forensics in infidelity of partner, employer, practitioner and in frauds in digital platforms – in Italian)