Curriculum Vitæ

Deep learning researcher with expertise in speech processing, natural language processing, and multimodal learning. Assistant Professor (RTD-A) at Kore University of Enna, Italy.

Experience

2024 – present

Assistant Professor (RTD-A)

Research in deep learning for speech processing, NLP, and multimodal learning. Teaching Machine Learning and Language and Speech Processing.

Oct. 2024

Visiting Researcher and Lecturer

2023 – 2024

Post-doctoral Researcher

2022 – 2023

Post-doctoral Researcher

Feb – Jul 2018

Research Internship

Design and implementation of an active learning algorithm for optimizing the trade-off between label cost and model accuracy in semi-automatic dataset annotation.

Feb – Jul 2017

Software Engineer Intern

Word-based vectorization techniques (Word2Vec) for semantic query matching in an Apache Solr-based search engine.

Education

2018 – 2022

Ph.D. in Computer Engineering

Politecnico di Torino

Deep learning for natural language understanding and summarization, with applications to text analysis, scientometrics, and spoken content.

2015 – 2018

M.Sc. in Computer Engineering

Politecnico di Torino & Grenoble INP (Double Degree)

Thesis: Active Learning for Semi-Automatic Dataset Labelization

2012 – 2015

B.Sc. in Computer Engineering

Politecnico di Torino

Service & Organization

2026

Technical Program Co-chair & Co-Located Events Chair

IEEE SLT 2026 (Spoken Language Technology Workshop), Palermo, Italy
2026

Workshop Co-organizer

2nd MCMI Workshop on Multi and Cross-Modal Information, ICPR 2026, Lyon, France
2025

Workshop Co-organizer

SPADE Workshop on Speech Pathology Analysis and Detection, ICASSP 2025, Hyderabad, India
2024

Workshop Co-organizer

MCMI Workshop on Multimodal and Cross-Modal Information, ICPR 2024, Kolkata, India

Technical Skills

Programming
Python, Java, C/C++
Web
PHP, JavaScript
ML Frameworks
PyTorch, JAX, Transformers, SciKit-Learn

Languages

Italian
Native speaker
English
Fluent (speaking and writing)
French
Proficient
German
Basic knowledge (currently learning)

Selected Publications

Full list on the publications page or Google Scholar.

Speech & Audio

La Quatra, M., Koudounas, A., Vaiani, L., Baralis, E., Cagliero, L., Garza, P., & Siniscalchi, S.M. (2024). Benchmarking Representations for Speech, Music, and Acoustic Events. ICASSPW 2024. arXiv
Koudounas, A., La Quatra, M., Siniscalchi, S.M., & Baralis, E. (2025). voc2vec: A Foundation Model for Non-Verbal Vocalization. ICASSP 2025.
La Quatra, M., Orozco-Arroyave, J.R., & Siniscalchi, S.M. (2025). Bilingual Dual-Head Deep Model for Parkinson's Disease Detection from Speech. ICASSP 2025.
La Quatra, M., Koudounas, A., Salerno, V.M., & Siniscalchi, S.M. (2025). Exploring Generative Error Correction for Dysarthric Speech Recognition. INTERSPEECH 2025.
Koudounas, A., La Quatra, M., Vaiani, L., et al. (2023). ITALIC: An Italian Intent Classification Dataset. INTERSPEECH 2023.

Language & Multimodal

La Quatra, M., Gallipoli, G., & Cagliero, L. (2024). Self-supervised Text Style Transfer using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 15(5).
La Quatra, M., Cagliero, L., Baralis, E., Messina, A., & Montagnuolo, M. (2021). Summarize Dates First: A Paradigm Shift in Timeline Summarization. ACM SIGIR 2021.
Greco, S., La Quatra, M., Cagliero, L., & Cerquitelli, T. (2025). Towards AI-Assisted Inclusive Language Writing in Italian Formal Communications. ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology, 16(4).
La Quatra, M., Vaiani, L., Koudounas, A., Cagliero, L., Garza, P., & Baralis, E. (2022). How Much Attention Should We Pay to Mosquitoes? ACM MM 2022.
Vaiani, L., La Quatra, M., Cagliero, L., & Garza, P. (2022). ViPER: Video-Based Perceiver for Emotion Recognition. ACM MM 2022 (MuSe Workshop).

Invited Talks

Aug. 2024

Keynote: Promoting Inclusivity through NLP

ACM KDD 2024, EDI Special Day, Barcelona, Spain

Downloads

CV (PDF) · PhD Thesis · PhD Defense Slides