Francesco Pierri

Francesco Pierri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB) at Politecnico di Milano. He is affiliated with Indiana University Bloomington’s Observatory on Social Media (OSOME) and was previously a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute.

Research Focus: His work sits at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Computational Social Science, specializing in building trustworthy and safe AI systems. He employs data-driven computer and network science methods to investigate large-scale online phenomena, particularly how generative AI reshapes digital information ecosystems. Core research themes include mitigating AI-amplified misinformation/disinformation risks and developing frameworks to enhance platform safety, accountability, and integrity.

Publication Trends: Recent work (2024-2025) reveals intense focus on societal impacts of generative AI, including conspiracy theory propagation on TikTok, AI’s role in information disorders, cultural bias in language models, and hate speech dynamics in political discourse. Key methodological threads involve network analysis, behavioral experiments with LLMs, and computational epidemiology models linking misinformation to real-world harm.

Scientific Recognition:

• National Scientific Habilitation in 09/H1 – Sistemi di Elaborazione delle Informazioni (II Fascia) (March 2025)

Academic Service & Mentoring: Pierri actively mentors Master’s students at Politecnico di Milano in LLM applications, social media integrity, and computational social science. He serves on program committees for premier conferences (ICWSM 2022-2025, The Web Conference 2024-2025, CIKM 2022-2025) and co-organizes specialized workshops like CySoc and RisksGenAI. His editorial roles include Associate Editor for EPJ Data Science and PLoS One, plus Guest Editor for ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology special issues.

Research Infrastructure: He operates within Politecnico di Milano’s Data Science Lab (DEIB) while maintaining active collaboration with OSOME. Pierri coordinates the Lake Como School of Advanced Studies’ Ph.D. program on Computational Social Science and co-leads the XJTU-Polimi Joint School of Design and Innovation’s data science curriculum.