USI Graduate Wins Record-Breaking IE Best Dissertation Award 2025
We are delighted to announce Andrea Cini, PhD graduate from the Faculty of Informatics, Università della Svizzera italiana (Switzerland), as the winner of the Informatics Europe 2025 Best Dissertation Award (BDA) for his work “Graph Deep Learning for Time Series Forecasting”.
The Award was presented on 27 October at the 21st European Informatics Leaders Summit (ECSS 2025) in Rennes, France. Before an audience of over 100 participants, the ceremony opened with greetings from a representative of the Rennes City Mayor, followed by the Award announcement and Andrea’s winning speech. Andrea was joined by his PhD advisor, Prof. Cesare Alippi, who atteneded the ceremony to celebrate the achievement.
Andrea’s research advances graph deep learning for time series forecasting. His framework models relationships among time series through relational (graph) representations, boosting forecasting accuracy, data efficiency, and computational scalability while addressing challenges like missing data. “I am honoured to receive this Award, the result of years of dedication and collaboration. I am excited to build on this work and explore more applications in energy analytics and healthcare,” Andrea said.
Runners-up and Distinguished Finalists
This year saw a record 34 nominations for the Award. Alongside the winner, three runners-up and two distinguished finalists were honoured.
Runners-up
- Nathan Cassee, TU Eindhoven (NL): “Sentiment in Software Engineering”
- Erasmo Purificato, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (DE): “Fairness Analysis of Graph Neural Networks for Behavioral User Modeling”
- Drishti Yadav, TU Wien (AT): “Enhancing Fault Diagnosis in Safety-Critical Cyber-Physical Systems”
Distinguished finalists
- Federica Filippini, Politecnico di Milano (IT): “Resource Allocation and Scheduling Problems in Computing Continua for AI Applications”
- Shuzhe Wang, Aalto University (FI): “Deep Learning Methods for Point Matching, Visual Localization and 3D Reconstruction”
Together with Andrea, runners-up Erasmo and Drishti, and finalist Federica, attended the ceremony and contributed to the Early Career Researchers Workshop earlier that day. Erasmo highlighted the ever-growing importance of fairness in AI, noting that his research aims to make AI systems more transparent and equitable. Both Drishti and Federica emphasised that the recognition celebrates not only their hard work in advancing the fields of cyber-physical systems and computing continuum, but also the invaluable support of their supervisors and colleagues, motivating them to continue their research toward more advanced and impactful solutions in their fields.
About the Award
The BDA annually recognises excellent PhD dissertations in Informatics from the IE member institutions. This year’s two-phase evaluation reviewed 34 submissions, with six advancing to the final round. One winner, three runners-up and two distinguished finalists were selected.
Prof. Premek Brada, Co-Chair of this year’s Award Committee, said, “It is inspiring to see so many high-quality dissertations from our member institutes. We warmly congratulate the Awardees and nominees for their excellent work, and are pleased the Award helps raise the visibility of early-career researchers, whose contributions we look forward to seeing make a lasting impact on society.”
The Award carries a prize of EUR 3,000 for the winner, sponsored by Springer Nature, which also offers a publishing opportunity for the best unpublished dissertation. “Springer is proud to provide support to young Informatics researchers at all stages of their careers, starting with the broad distribution of their work in journals, conferences, and books. We are deeply impressed by the high-quality nominations received for the Award which shows its reputation and importance to the community. Our sponsoring of the Award also emphasizes our continued partnership with Informatics Europe.”, explains Welmoed Spahr, Vice President Computer Science Books with Springer Nature.
To discover more about Springer, please visit www.springer.com.
To learn more about the Award since its establishment in 2023, please visit
http://www.informatics-europe.org/research/best-dissertation-award.html.
About Informatics Europe
Informatics Europe represents the academic and research community in Informatics (or computer science) in Europe. Bringing together nearly 200 university departments, research laboratories, and industry partners, Informatics Europe connects over 50,000 Informatics researchers in more than 30 countries across Europe. IE creates a strong voice to promote shared priorities in education, research, knowledge transfer, and the societal impact of Informatics. Explore our website to learn more about our projects and services.