Luca de Alfaro

Luca de Alfaro is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he has been a faculty member since 2001. He is affiliated with the Baskin School of Engineering and conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of computer science and real-world applications.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Stanford University, 1998
• Undergraduate studies, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• Postdoctoral research, UC Berkeley

Research Interests: His current research spans three major areas: (1) Machine Learning and AI, with a focus on fairness, subgroup performance analysis, data drift, and model improvement; (2) Computational Ecology, where he collaborates with ecologists to model animal habitats (e.g., birds, pumas) and support conservation using ML and optimization; and (3) Networks, where he applies reinforcement learning to design adaptive, efficient, and fair network protocols. His earlier work contributed to formal methods, software engineering, and reputation systems.

Publication Trends: His recent publications (2020–2024) emphasize subgroup analysis in ML, particularly for fairness in speech and classification models, and reinforcement learning applications in wireless networks. Tools like DivExplorer and NotebookGrader reflect his commitment to practical, accessible research software.

Scientific Awards:

• Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Foreign Member of the Turin Academy of Sciences
• Four test-of-time awards for foundational work in formal methods, software engineering, and game theory

Advising and Grants: Luca has advised over ten Ph.D. students whose work spans reinforcement learning, crowdsourcing, reputation systems, and educational technology. He has mentored postdoctoral researchers including Krishnendu Chatterjee and Mariëlle Stoelinga. While specific grants are not listed, his sustained research output and tool development (e.g., NotebookGrader) suggest active funding support. He leads projects integrating AI with ecology and education, indicating interdisciplinary grant involvement.

Labs and Teams: He leads research initiatives in ML fairness and computational ecology, often in collaboration with Elena Baralis, Eliana Pastor, and ecologist Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela. He is the primary developer of NotebookGrader, an open-source platform for teaching Python via Google Colab, hosted on GitHub and used at UCSC.