Francesco Pierri

Welcome to my personal website!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Data Science group of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) at Politecnico di Milano. In the past, I have been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California (Information Sciences Institute) and the Indiana University Bloomington (Observatory on Social Media).

My research falls in the area of Computational Social Science and it focuses on data-driven computer science and network science methodologies to study online large-scale phenomena. In particular, I study the impact of generative AI on online information ecosystems and investigate online information disorders (misinformation and disinformation campaigns) that affect the integrity of online social media platforms. 

Feel free to reach out via email at: francesco dot pierri at polimi dot it

For a complete list of my publications check my Google Scholar profile.

News

Activities

  • Program Committee for: CSCW (2022), ICWSM (2022-24), The ACM Web Conference (2024), CIKM (2023-24), ACM WebSci (2022-24), IC2S2 (2023-24)
  • Co-chair International workshop on Cyber Social Threats (CySoc) Workshop series (@ICWSM’22, @TheWebConf’23, @ICWSM’24)
  • Associate Editor, EPJ Data Science, Springer
  • Associate Editor, PLoS One
  • Lead Guest Editor Special Issue on “Computational Approaches for Cyber Social Threats” EPJ Data Science, Springer
  • Coordinator Ph.D. School “Computational Social Science: Advances, Challenges and Opportunities” (1st edition) as part of Lake Como School of Advanced Studies (https://css.lakecomoschool.org/, May 2024)

Thesis Proposals

If you are Master student at Politecnico di Milano and are interested in working on one of the topics below send me an email with your CV and transcript of records:

  • Leveraging Large Language Models (chatGPT et al.) to counter online misinformation and hate speech
  • Analyzing political targeted advertisement on Meta (Facebook, Instagram) platforms
  • Studying human behaviour in online multiplayer games (e.g. League of Legends, DOTA)
  • Investigating conspiracy theories on TikTok and YouTube