Abstract

In the age of ubiquitous mobile devices with increasing computation power and sensing capabilities, location-based apps and services are still facing many hurdles to accurately and truthfully understand where the user is. Solving this problem requires a multidimensional approach that spans the entire technological stack, from mobile sensors and hardware enhancements to large-scale data processing and machine intelligence.

This talk will cover the technological challenges characterising the process of precisely locating a device, understanding the semantics associated with a location, and gaining insights about how users move around and experience the world.

Biography

Salvatore is a Senior Software Engineer at Google, where he leads mobile projects related to location inference and context-awareness, contributing to products with millions of users.

Salvatore completed his PhD in 2012 in the Network and Operating Systems group at the Computer Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. His main research interests include online social networks, location-based services, human mobility modelling and related software systems. During his PhD he published in the fields of data mining, online social systems and user behaviour modelling. Salvatore was also a research intern at Google, and he joined the company full-time soon after completing his PhD.