Current work

As coordinator of the Docking Lab, I am currently working on the following research streams (click on the link form more informations):

• software for molecular docking with application to drug design;
• new protocols for molecular design in medicinal chemistry;
  
• virtual screening of locally developed molecule libraries;

and also in collaboration with the CRS4 system biology group on

• yeast gene expression analysis by the mean of directed network, particularly growing network models, motifs search, generating function approach.

Moreover, I am looking with interest to the possibilities and problems offered by the non coding RNA research field.

Recent selected papers and posters:

• Insights into biological information processing: structural and dynamical analysis of a human protein signalling network, A. de la Fuente, G. Fotia, F. Maggio, G. Mancosu and E. Pieroni, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor, Special Issue: Complex Networks—from Biology to Information Technology , May 2008.

• Protein networking: insights into global functional organization of proteomes, Pieroni E, de la Fuente van Bentem S, Mancosu G, Capobianco E, Hirt H, de la Fuente A., Proteomics, Volume 8, Issue 4, 799-816 Special issue reviews, Feb 2008.
  

• Inference and structural analysis of a Yeast Gene Network, G. Mancosu, G. Fotia, E. Pieroni, F. Maggio and A. de la Fuente, Poster at the 15th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) & 6th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), Vienna (Austria), July 21-25, 2007.
• Dynamics on signed motifs in a Yeast Gene Network, F. Maggio, G. Fotia, G. Mancosu, E. Pieroni, E. and A. de la Fuente Poster at the 15th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) & 6th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), Vienna (Austria), July 21-25, 2007.
• A Web of Genes: Inference and structural analysis of a Yeast Gene Network, G. Mancosu, G. Fotia, E. Pieroni, F. Maggio and A. de la Fuente, Poster at the STATPHYS 2007 Satellite Conference: Complex Networks—from Biology to Information Technology, Pula (Italy), July 2-6, 2007.
• Growing a yeast gene network, Enrico Pieroni, Gianmaria Mancosu, Alberto de la Fuente, Poster at the STATPHYS 2007 Satellite Conference: Complex Networks—from Biology to Information Technology, Pula (Italy), July 2-6, 2007.
  
  

Address

Enrico Pieroni
CRS4 Bioinformatica - Polaris Edificio 3 - Loc. Piscina Manna - 09010 Pula (CA) - Italy
Email: ep {at} crs4.it - Phone +39 070 9250 425 - Fax +39 070 9250 216

Who am I?

I graduated in Physics at Pisa University, with a strong education in theoretical physics, and an experimental thesis at SLAC, California, developing the muon trigger system for the detector SLD, devoted to the study of Z0 decay properties. Then, I made a PhD in computational theoretical physics at Pisa University Theoretical Group, developing 1/N expansion of Gross Neveu models in more than two dimensions (here ps with figures) and related lattice computations.

In 1993 I joined the Parallel Computing group at the recently born CRS4. I mainly developed parallel algorithms for ENI/Agip, for seismic data inversion, that is the reconstruction of subsurface acoustic and electromagnetic properties by using the huge amount of indirect information collected at the surface after an energy pulse have been 'injected' in the subsoil. More precisely, I coded algorithms on McClellan and PSPI migration, wave propagation and absorbing boundaries for red-lights blinking machines like CM200, CM5 and cluster of Unix workstations.

Then, I specialized on reverse time migration and innovative schemes for wave equation solution with absorbing boundary conditions, optimal accuracy, stability and dispersion. Following the wave, I moved to code in F90 and HPF for IBM SP2, SGI Power Challenge and Octane and PC/linux cluster.

It was then arrived the point, and a sufficient CPU power, for a wider breath approach to seismic data analysis by adopting inverse problem techniques. In the meanwhile, I tried to extend the application of these ideas and developed an algorithm for ultrasound medical imaging, opening the road to high frame rate visualization and 3D, in collaboration with Esaote (Genova).

In 2001 I became the leader of the Imaging and Numerical Geophysics Group, coordinating the researchers in designing efficient high-performance and parallel F95/MPI codes for 3D seismic imaging (wave migration and CRS Stack), started new projects on seismic while drilling imaging and on EM modeling and inversion of FEM and TEM data. I continued to develop the inverse problem techniques applied to seismic data trying to reduce computational complexity by using post-stack (compressed) data and an adaptive multi-scale automatic algorithm.

I had a break of about one year and half, working on hard sphere gas simulation and mesoscale simulation of new materials for proton transport in fuel cells, and then, in April 2006, the turning point: I joined the Bioinformatics Research Group at CRS4. I was back to school for 6 months to complete a master in Bioinformatics applied to personalized medicine and then started working.

I have an interest in didactics too and taught Numerical Analysis and Parallel Calculus Lab (Master in Advanced Computational Techniques, CRS4), Environmental Geophysics and Numerical Lab (CINSA), Electromagnetic Field (ASL Carbonia), developed multimedia physics lessons for the high school suitable for e-learning and incremental lesson building, translated/adapted for the Italian high schools the Waves related chapters of the books "Physics: a world view", Kirkpatrick and Wheeler, Saunders College Publishing, and published the high school book "Physics Lab" edited by PBM, Milan.

If you are interested, here you can query CRS4 dB (just Pieroni as author) and read the list, accessing some of them, of all my papers, presentations and technical reports at CRS4. A list of my papers in the HEP field, and access to their contents, can be found with a simple query at SPIRES.

If you are interested in knowing more details, have a look to my resume.