Story Behind the Success: Domenico Ciuonzo

Behind each “success story”, there is a mix of hard work, dedication, and no shortcuts. This makes no exception in my case, as I am here to tell a little bit about my academic path and how I ended up receiving the AESS early career award for “contributions to decentralized inference and sensor fusion in networked sensor systems” (or, to put it simply, “how I have applied known stuff from statistical signal processing to a very cool field”).

I received both my bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Engineering from the former Second University of Naples (now University of Campania L. Vanvitelli) in 2007 and 2009, and shortly after I was enrolled in the Ph.D. program within the same university (mostly unaware of the difficulties this could imply), under the supervision of F. A. N. Palmieri. My Ph.D. focused on the design of efficient and effective data fusion techniques with application to wireless sensor networks. I had a very slow start at the beginning, including many rejected papers and moments of discouragement. However, these events were very helpful to tune myself to a productive work routine and to learn accepting criticism with a positive attitude. Hence, at the end of my Ph.D., I was able to provide some good contributions to my research topic. This was thanks also (i) to my “informal” advisor P. Salvo Rossi and (ii) to my visiting period at UConn, working under the supervision of P. Willett and Y. Bar-Shalom. Therein I have learnt the dos and don'ts of recognized scientists.

I was then a one-year postdoc in the same university, working on array-processing techniques applied to the intersection of signal processing and electromagnetics, supervised by R. Solimene (i.e. applying MUSIC while listening to music). Then, I decided to move to the University of Naples Federico II for another postdoc in looking for further motivation. I was there for two years (under the supervision of A. De Maio), and had the opportunity of learning stuff related to radar signal processing and interacting with many colleagues. When my grant ended, I was obliged to look around for other opportunities. Hence, I was hired in a startup (named NM2) whose core business pertains to network traffic measurement & monitoring with a heavy focus on applied/industrial research. Therein, I enjoyed the collaboration with the Traffic research group at UNINA (led by A. Pescapè) and I was able to learn new cool stuff related to network analytics and their design based on AI (not Amplitude Information, according to YBS dictionary) techniques. This now represents my second most important expertise. While I was working on these topics, I was continuing my research work on decentralized inference and sensor fusion, capitalizing on the benefit of new things learned and getting renewed inspiration. Changing research topics may seem detrimental at first, but in the long run, allows you to conceive “fresh” research ideas. After roughly two years, in 2018 I won a competition for a non-tenured assistant professorship at UNINA, where I am staying since 3+1/2 years (and, who knows, more) while having fruitful collaborations with department colleagues and with many globally-recognized scientists.

During all these years, I was lucky to receive a few other awards for my research activity. Still, I believe that the main accomplishment one can obtain is having a good reputation among your peers. This is indeed the kind of suggestion I would like to pass to “younger” (as I am not that old…) researchers in the form of some simple rules: (i) do not work only for getting your paper accepted but rather focus on gathering the associated technical expertise, (ii) be proud of your ideas, (iii) be always polite and respectful of others’ work, independently on the role and the context (iv) infallibility does not belong to this world, hence admitting mistakes is a big plus. These are common elements you will usually find in very successful scientists like those I had the luck of meeting/collaborating with.

Finally, a success story cannot be named such if you don’t recognize people who were there when you needed it! Hence, special thanks to (my apologies if I am certainly missing someone): my parents, my wife Rosaria and my daughter Lucia (hands-down my main accomplishment to date), my friend/colleague P. Salvo Rossi (and colleagues/students at NTNU), YBS and P. Willett (who were able to withstand my presence at Uconn for almost 1 year!), P. Varshney (whose technical skills are only surpassed by his humility), X. Wang (for being an outstanding example of research excellence), D. Orlando and L. Pallotta (bright co-authors working in the AESS field), S. Greco and S. Marano (for allowing me to be involved in the AESS community very early from my Ph.D.). Last but not least, thanks to the whole AESS Awards Committee for considering me worthy of this award among many other deserving scientists.