news – Systems Biology and Bioinformatics Group

September 7, 2026

SysBioBiG at CIBB 2026 in Rome

Our research group participated in the 21st Conference on Computational Intelligence Methods for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (CIBB 2026), held in Rome from September 2 to 4, 2026.

During the conference, our PhD student Sergio Gaiotti presented the contribution “Treatment persistence drives estimator performance in longitudinal causal inference based on observational data: A simulation study”, authored by Sergio Gaiotti, Sara Poletto, Enrico Longato, Erica Tavazzi, and Martina Vettoretti.

The work, developed within the European REDDIE – Real-World Evidence for Decisions in Diabetes project, investigates how treatment dynamics influence the performance of causal inference methods for longitudinal observational data. In particular, the study highlights the role of treatment persistence in determining the behaviour of baseline and longitudinal estimators, showing that treatment dynamics can have a greater impact than functional complexity on estimator performance.

We thank the session chairs and the CIBB 2026 organisers for the stimulating discussion and for another great edition of a conference that has long been a regular appointment for our group.

April 30, 2026April 30, 2026

SysBioBiG at DEILeaks 2026

🚀 We are excited to take part in DEILeaks – ResearchBeyondExams, an initiative giving Bachelor’s and Master’s students the opportunity to discover ongoing research activities and meet research groups working across different scientific fields.

During the event, our team have presented the activities of the SysBioBiG Research Group at the Department of Information Engineering, focusing on research in Bioinformatics and Health Informatics 🧬 💻

March 16, 2026

Two Research Contributions from Our Group Presented at ATTD 2026

Last week, our research group had the opportunity to take part in the 19th International Conference on Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD 2026), held in the fascinating city of Barcelona, Spain.

During the conference, our PhD student Sara Poletto presented two research contributions developed within the framework of the European project REDDIE, which we are proud to be part of.

Advancing research in diabetes is essential to improve prevention, management, and quality of life for millions of people worldwide, and we are excited to contribute to this collective effort.

January 20, 2026

Participation in the UNIPD Annual Event of the DARE Initiative

On 16 January 2026, the “Guido Petter” Conference Hall at the School of Psychology hosted the annual meeting dedicated to the UNIPD’s activities within the DARE (DigitAl lifelong pRevEntion) initiative. The event featured an overview of the ongoing DARE projects led by UNIPD researchers, a seminar delivered by the Arsenal.IT consortium on the secondary use of healthcare data, and two roundtable discussions designed to encourage multidisciplinary exchange.

During the meeting, Professor Barbara Di Camillo took part in an insightful roundtable discussion entitled “From Research to Healthcare Practice: Working Together for New Perspectives in Prevention.” In addition, our researcher Enrico Longato presented the current progress of Work Package 3, Task 3.3a, entitled “Digitally-Empowered Management of Type 2 Diabetes: From Diagnosis to the Prediction of Complications.”

Overall, the meeting provided an important opportunity to exchange ideas, strengthen collaborations, and gain a comprehensive view of the diverse and innovative contributions of UNIPD within the DARE initiative.

December 9, 2025

Our Research Group at AI@DEI 2025 – From Research to Industry

Last week our research group took part in AI@DEI 2025 – From Research to Industry, the annual event organised by the Department of Information Engineering (DEI) of the University of Padova and the Regional Innovation Network IMPROVENET, with the support of UniSMART.
The initiative aims to strengthen the dialogue between academia and industry, showcasing concrete applications of Artificial Intelligence across a wide range of sectors, from computer vision to predictive maintenance, industrial decision-making, robotics, automation, and conversational technologies.

As part of the programme, our researcher Erica Tavazzi delivered the presentation: “Fondo Italiano per le Scienze Applicate: AI e diagnostica avanzata nella partnership DEI–AB Analitica contro l’antibiotico resistenza”.

The talk, prepared together with Dino Paladin (AB Analitica), introduced READY – Responsive Early Antibiotic resistance Detection and therapY, the project funded by the Italian Applied Sciences Fund (FISA) and launched this year. READY focuses on integrating AI, automation, and advanced diagnostics to support the early detection of antimicrobial resistance.

We warmly thank DEI, IMPROVENET, and UniSMART for organising the event, as well as all participating companies and colleagues for the productive exchange of perspectives.
A special acknowledgement goes to Sara Brugnerotto, whose photos beautifully captured the atmosphere of the day.

November 27, 2025

New article on realistic tumoral sample simulation published in BMC Bioinformatics!

🚀 We’re excited to share that our latest paper is now published in BMC Bioinformatics: MOV&RSim: computational modelling of cancer-specific variants and sequencing reads characteristics for realistic tumoral sample simulation, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-025-06292-0

📊 We developed MOV&RSIM, a novel simulator that leverages data-driven information to set variants and reads characteristics, producing realistic tumoral samples, and providing full control on biological and technical parameters. Additionally, we leveraged well-annotated variant databases to create cancer-specific presets that inform the simulator’s parameters for 21 cancer types.

🔍 The proposed simulator and presets represent the most adaptable and comprehensive computational framework currently available for generating tumor samples, enabling comprehensive benchmarking and, ultimately, the optimization of somatic variant callers across diverse cancer types.

👥 This research is the result of a collaboration between our group and AB ANALITICA srl. Congratulations to the first author, Dr. Francesca Longhin, who developed MOV&RSim during her doctoral studies in our research group!

🔗 The tool is freely available on gitlab at: https://gitlab.com/sysbiobig/movarsim

September 15, 2025September 15, 2025

CONVECS @ HPCSIM2025

Last week, Giacomo attended HPCSIM25 – Frontiers of High-Performance & Cloud Computing in Modeling and Simulation, held in Padova, Italy, on September 11–12, 2025.

The event focused on the latest methodologies and technologies in the field of High-Performance Computing (HPC), offering researchers and practitioners an overview of the current landscape and future directions of HPC in both real-world applications and scientific research.

Giacomo delivered an oral presentation titled “High-Performance Scientific Computing in Veneto: The CONVECS Initiative”, introducing the CONVECS project (COmuNità VEneta per il Calcolo Scientifico) where he is responsible for leading multiple core tasks. This initiative, recognized as an Operation of Strategic Importance by the Veneto Regional Government, aims to enhance, consolidate, and interconnect the HPC infrastructures currently available across universities and research laboratories in the Veneto region. Its goal is to create a unified, scalable computing environment accessible to both academic researchers and technology-driven enterprises, driving measurable impact in science, industry, and society.

September 15, 2025September 24, 2025

Sysbiobig @ CIBB2025

Last week we attended the 20th Conference on Computational Intelligence Methods for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (CIBB2025) in Milano from September 10th to 12th, 2025.

We’re proud to share that our group contributed to the scientific program with three oral presentations showcasing our recent research efforts:

🧠 Piero Mariotto, Ilaria Patuzzi, Giada Innocente, Barbara Simionati, Barbara Di Camillo, Giacomo Baruzzo “A network science-based approach to unveil the effects of faecal microbiota transplantation in enteropathic dogs” (great collaboration with EuBiome srl)

📊 Federico De Mori Bajolin, Anna Maria Bianchi, Erica Tavazzi “A multivariate deep-learning approach for stratifying Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients based on temporal dynamics“

💉 Davide Dei Cas, Barbara Di Camillo, Gian Paolo Fadini, Giovanni Sparacino, Enrico Longato “The impact of clinical history on the predictive performance of machine learning and deep learning models for renal complications of diabetes“

July 29, 2025July 29, 2025

Sysbiobig @ISMB/ECCB 2025

Last week, Barbara, Giacomo, Giulia, Gaia, and Matteo attended the 33rd Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology & 24th European Conference on Computational Biology (ISMB/ECCB 2025), held in Liverpool, UK, from July 20–24, 2025.

The conference was a valuable opportunity to attend cutting-edge presentations, engage in discussions on the latest advances in bioinformatics, and foster new collaborations.

We’re proud to share that our group contributed to the scientific program with several presentations:

Giulia Cesaro delivered an oral presentation in the NetBio session titled “Cell-specific Graph Operation Strategy on Signaling Intracellular Pathways” showcasing work done in collaboration with the CostaLab at RWTH Aachen University.
Giacomo Baruzzo presented the poster “Realistic Simulation of NGS Reads from Tumoral Samples with MOV&RSim”, a project led by Francesca Longhin (former PhD student of our group), in collaboration with AB Analitica.
Matteo Baldan presented the poster “Integrating Biological Knowledge for Feature Summarization in Spatial Transcriptomics”.
Gaia Tussardi presented the poster “Multilevel Network Visualization for Deciphering Dysregulated Cellular Signalling”.
In collaboration with the CostaLab at RWTH Aachen University, we also co-organized the tutorial “Computational Approaches for Deciphering Cell-Cell Communication from Single-Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics Data”.

July 7, 2025

Our contribution to AIME 2025 in Pavia

Last week, our group attended the 23^rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME 2025) in Pavia, Italy.

It was a fantastic opportunity to follow high-quality presentations and engage with leading researchers and professionals from across the AI and healthcare communities.

We are proud to share that we contributed to the scientific program with four research papers:

Davide Dei Cas held a short oral presentation entitled “Exploring the Use of Projecting Conflicting Gradients in Multi-Task Neural Networks with an Application to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.”

Erica Tavazzi co-authored the poster “Towards Distributed Process Discovery in Healthcare: Testing and Proving the Feasibility of the Federated Alpha+ Algorithm.”

At the 2^nd International Workshop on Process Mining Applications for Healthcare (PM4H 2025), our group was also involved in two contributions: “Predicting Next Clinical Event in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis using Process-Oriented Machine Learning Models: a Case Study” and “Federated I-PALIA: Privacy-By-Design Distributed Process Discovery for Duplicated Activities in Healthcare” (🏆Best Paper Award – PM4H 2025).

We sincerely thank the conference organizers for hosting this event and for giving us the opportunity to share our research.