Irene Spada
I’m currently Junior Assistant Professor (RTDa) in Management Engineering (SSD ING-IND35) at the Department of Engineering of Energy, Systems, Land and Construction of the Univeristy of Pisa. I am member of the Research Group B4DS Business Engineering for Data Science (http://b4ds.unipi.it). My research focuses on the use of engineering design methods and text mining techniques to study the impact of digitalization and technological transformation in education and training. I participated in several International Conferences and co-authored articles published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change and in Studies in Higher Education. I have been involved in many research projects about skills foresight at national and international level. I had the opportunity to carry out various educational activities such as seminars on text mining, graph theories, and project management, debates, and tutoring activities. In 2023 I obtained the PhD in Smart Industry, with an excellent grade, defending the thesis “Innovating Curriculum Design in Higher Education with Text Mining”. In 2020, I obtained the MEng in Management Engineering at the University of Pisa, with a thesis titled “Text driven technological mapping of C4ISTAR: defining a fuzzy defence related domain” and realized during an internship at the Bordeaux School of Economics of the University of Bordeaux. In 2016, I obtained BEng in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Pisa, with a thesis titled “Caratteri principali della produzione additiva e realizzazione di un prototipo di base lunare con stampa 3D” describing applications of additive manufacturing in aerospace domain and an experiment with a prototype.
Technologies and Skills Intelligence, Education and Training, Pedagogical Approaches, Text Mining, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence
My research focuses on the use of engineering design methods and text mining techniques to study the impact of digitalization and technological transformation in education and training. I am interested in firstly understanding effects and consequences of industrial revolutions in companies and societies. The pace of the transformation demands for timely and effective actions and the large availability of data enables informed decision-making process. Thus, I aim at developing and then applying data-driven models for supporting decision making, with reference to the areas of Intelligence Management (topics: technological and skills intelligence, competitive intelligence) and of Design and Management for Higher Education (topics: curriculum design, innovative pedagogical approaches). In the research activities, the disciplines of Management Engineering and Data Science mix up. The former regards the methods and tools to model phenomena, the latter Statistics and Natural Language Processing to analyze data.
I participated in several European, National and Regional projects: Since 2020, “ASSETs+ – Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence”, the Sector Skills Alliance for Defence Sector funded by Erasmus+ Europe Programme, for the analysis of skills for emerging technologies and for the design of educational activities. In 2023 “MARTe – A technological approach to microcredentials”, dedicated to the definition of guidelines for the design of micro-credentials. From 2023, member of the working group of the Univeristy of Pisa in the project PRA “EduSkillMeter, a text mining-based tool to support universities and companies to be in line with SDGs”. From 2023, member of the working group of the University of Pisa for the development of an Observatory of Skills and Occupations (Agreement CIMEA-DESTeC). In 2022 “ENCORE – ENriching Circular Use of OeR for Education”, founded by Erasmus+ Europe Programme, for the analysis of skills related to green, digital and entrepreneurial fields. In 2022, collaboration with Camera di Commercio della Maremma e del Tirreno for supporting innovation in SMEs. In 2021 “E-STEM Toolboxes for SuperFastLearning digital contents development in STEM”, founded by Erasmus+ Europe Programme, for active learning in STEM education. In 2020-2021, regional projects “Integrazione continua di sorgenti eterogenee per massimizzare il valore e l’impiego di Toscana Open Research” (Continuous integration of heterogeneous sources to maximize the value and use of Toscana Open Research) and “MODA – accresciMento delle cOmpetenze innovative per la moDA” (Skills development in Fashion industry) I carried out research activities abroad and in company: In 2023, research stay abroad in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in collaboration with the COSEC Lab (Computer Security Lab), with the project “Detecting the relations between social/cultural behaviour (using Hofstede’s Model and similar), cyberattacks and hacker groups”. In 2022, research project “PM Skills Map – Mapping Project Management Skills for Education Design” realized within Beam Me Up, a spin-off of the University of Pisa.