Anna Bernasconi

Anna Bernasconi is a Tenure-Track Researcher (Assistant Professor) at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano, where she leads the Bioinformatics and Data Science Lab within the Genomic Computing group. She has been a visiting researcher at Universitat Politècnica de València (Jan-June 2022). Her research focuses on applying conceptual modeling, data integration, and knowledge engineering in life sciences and other applied sciences domains, with an emphasis on building open-source tools and services.

Dr. Bernasconi earned her Master in Computer Engineering in 2015 from Politecnico di Milano and the University of Illinois, Chicago. She completed her PhD from Politecnico di Milano in 2021 with a thesis on genomic data integration. Her academic journey has positioned her at the intersection of computer science and bioinformatics.

Her research interests span multiple areas of bioinformatics and data science. She specializes in bioinformatics data and metadata integration methodologies to support complex biological query answering. In recent years, she has focused on viral genomics, particularly sequence modeling, integration, and search systems for mitigating the effects of pandemics like COVID-19. She applies conceptual modeling and knowledge engineering techniques to develop open-source tools for genomic data analysis. Her work bridges computer science with life sciences, addressing challenges in genomic surveillance, data integration, and knowledge management.

Dr. Bernasconi's recent publications demonstrate a clear trend toward developing practical tools for genomic surveillance and text analysis. Her work spans from viral genome analysis (Nature Communication 2024) to database systems (SIGMOD 2024) and topic modeling for large text corpora (EDBT 2025), showing her ability to work across multiple technical domains while maintaining a focus on real-world applications in health and environmental science.

• National Scientific Habilitation in two categories: 09/H1 – Sistemi di Elaborazione delle Informazioni (II Fascia) and 01/B1 – Informatica (II Fascia)
• Principal Investigator of the SENSIBLE PRIN PNRR 2022 project (funded with ~240K Euros)
• Principal Investigator of the NGI Search TETYS project (150K Euros funding)
• Co-founder of LegisRatio S.r.l., a Politecnico di Milano spin-off innovative startup
• Academic Editor for Plos One and BMC Bioinformatics

Dr. Bernasconi actively mentors students and collaborates across disciplines. She is Principal Investigator of significant research projects including SENSIBLE, which aims to develop an early warning system for viral pathogens based on genomic surveillance, and TETYS, which focuses on topic modeling and visualization for large text corpora. Her research has secured funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) and the European Union's Horizon Europe program. She collaborates with experts across disciplines, including virologists like Prof. Ilaria Capua from Johns Hopkins University.

She leads the Bioinformatics and Data Science Lab at Politecnico di Milano, which has developed several notable tools including ViruClust (for comparing SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences), VariantHunter (for monitoring mutation evolution), and RecombinHunt (for identifying recombination events in viral species). Her team also created CORToViz for exploring the CORD-19 dataset and TETYS for topic modeling in various domains including climate change research.