About

Who I am.

I'm an MSc student in Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Cagliari and an Orthogonal Scholar with the ELICSIR Foundation — one of twenty Master's students nationwide invited into a competitive excellence program funded by Schmidt Sciences.

BSc Final Grade
110L
Summa Cum Laude
BSc GPA
29.83 / 30
Computer Science
Orthogonal Scholar
Top 20
in Italy
Faculty Excellence Program
Admitted
UniCA
Currently
  • —Recently admitted to the Faculty Excellence Program — reserved for top-percentile students.
  • —Active in the ELICSIR Orthogonal School — research sprints, seminars and weekend workshops.
  • —A research collaboration is in the making — more soon.
Research interests
Image ProcessingFoundation ModelsMachine LearningFederated LearningComputer Vision
Education

Academic trajectory.

A deliberate path through Italy’s most selective programs, anchored by a strong curiosity.

2026

[ Coming soon ]

Incoming

—

  • Details to be announced soon. A research collaboration is in the making.

University of Cagliari

Sep 2025 — Present

MSc · Computer Science — Applied Artificial Intelligence

GPA 30 / 30

Cagliari, Italy

  • Concentration on Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Image Processing and Medical AI.
  • Admitted to the Faculty Excellence Program — reserved for top-percentile graduate researchers.

ELICSIR Foundation · Orthogonal School

Sep 2025 — Present

Excellence Program — Orthogonal Scholar

Top 20 in Italy

Italy

  • Selected — alongside 19 other Master’s students nationwide — for a competitive two-year excellence program funded by Schmidt Sciences.
  • High-level seminars, research sprints, and workshops with leading figures across academia and industry.

University of Cagliari

Sep 2022 — Sep 2025

BSc · Computer Science

110 / 110 cum Laude

Cagliari, Italy

  • GPA 29.83 / 30 — Best Student Award 2024/2025 (1st Place, third-year cohort).
  • Thesis: “Peripheral Blood Smear Image Analysis — a Framework for the Diagnosis of TTP”.
Honors & Awards

A few recognitions along the way.

Selective scholarships, awards, and invitations to research programs.

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Orthogonal Scholarship

2025

ELICSIR Foundation · Schmidt Sciences

Two-year excellence scholarship awarded to the top 20 Master’s students in Italy.

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Best Student Award — 1st Place

2024 / 2025

University of Cagliari

Top of class among third-year Computer Science students (BSc cohort).

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National Register of Excellence

2022

Italian Ministry of Education

Inducted for outstanding performance among Italian high-school graduates.

Invited Talks

Selected talks I’ve delivered.

Seminars and invited talks where I’ve presented at academic venues, under the mentorship of senior supervisors.

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When the Model Goes to the Data: A Journey through Federated Learning

May 16, 2026

IV Weekend Ortogonale · ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Supervisor: Prof.ssa Valeria Cardellini

Procida Island, Naples · Italy

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Federated Learning for Medical Image Analysis

Jan 08, 2026

Image Processing Seminars · University of Cagliari

Cagliari · Italy

Conferences & Summer Schools

Where I’ve been learning.

Selected research events, summer schools, and weekend workshops I’ve taken part in as an Orthogonal Scholar.

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BOOST 25 Summer School

2025

ELICSIR Foundation

Bologna · Italy

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Futuro Annunciato

2025

ELICSIR Foundation

San Servolo Island, Venice · Italy

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I Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Orvieto · Italy

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II Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Certosa di Pontignano, Siena · Italy

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III Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Bertinoro · Italy

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IV Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Procida Island, Naples · Italy

Research & Experience

Selected research and engineering work.

From medical-imaging foundation models to operations-research solvers — a snapshot of recent work.

Nov 2024 — Apr 2025Research Intern · BSc ThesisLead author

Peripheral Blood Smear Image Analysis for TTP Diagnosis

University of Cagliari · Medical AI Group

  • Engineered a deep-learning framework for the automated analysis of peripheral blood smear images.
  • Implemented high-precision cell segmentation using Cellpose foundation models.
  • Built a custom Single-Cell Dataset by generating bounding boxes and classifying regions of interest.
  • Boosted predictive performance through Data Augmentation and Ensemble Learning.
PythonPyTorchCellposeScikit-Learn
2025Academic Project · MSc

Unsupervised Clustering on High-Dimensional Data

University of Cagliari · Applied AI

  • Comparative analysis of clustering algorithms on the mfeat-karhunen dataset.
  • Designed a preprocessing pipeline to mitigate the curse of dimensionality.
  • Evaluated cluster quality across 2D → 64D subspaces using internal and external validation metrics.
PythonScikit-learnPandasPCA
2025Academic Project · MSc

Supply Chain Network Optimization (UFLP)

University of Cagliari · Operations Research

  • Developed exact and heuristic solutions for the Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem.
  • Modeled Strong vs. Weak MILP formulations in Gurobi, analyzing LP relaxation tightness.
  • Implemented constructive heuristics achieving near-optimal solutions with reduced runtime.
PythonGurobiMILPHeuristics
Tech stack

Tools of the trade.

Languages, libraries and frameworks.

Languages
  • PythonPrimary
  • C
  • Java
  • OCaml
  • SQL
ML / Vision
  • PyTorch
  • Cellpose
  • OpenCV
  • Scikit-learn
Data & Tools
  • NumPy
  • Pandas
  • Gurobi
  • CUDA
Get in touch

Let's talk.

Open to research collaborations, visiting positions and conversations.

cloud.neffe@gmail.comarrow
© Nicola FigusCagliari · Italy