Francesca Toni is an Italian computer scientist who works at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

in the UK as JP Morgan/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Argumentation for Interactive Explainable AI, Professor in Computational Logic in the Department of Computing, and head of the Computational Logic and Argumentation Group. Her research interests include

explainable artificial intelligence Explainable AI (XAI), or Interpretable AI, or Explainable Machine Learning (XML), is artificial intelligence (AI) in which humans can understand the decisions or predictions made by the AI. It contrasts with the "black box" concept in machine lear ...

computational logic Computational logic is the use of logic to perform or reason about computation. It bears a similar relationship to computer science and engineering as mathematical logic bears to mathematics and as philosophical logic bears to philosophy. It is s ...

argumentation theory Argumentation theory, or argumentation, is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be supported or undermined by premises through logical reasoning. With historical origins in logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, argumentation theory, includ ...

, and applications in

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...

Education and career

Toni is originally from "a small town in

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...

." Initially intending to go into mathematics, she switched to computer science in her last year of high school. She has a

laurea In Italy, the ''laurea'' is the main post-secondary academic degree. The name originally referred literally to the laurel wreath, since ancient times a sign of honor and now worn by Italian students right after their official graduation ceremony ...

(the Italian equivalent of a master's degree) from the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...

, earned in 1990, and completed a doctorate from Imperial College London in 1995. Her dissertation, on

abductive logic programming Abductive logic programming (ALP) is a high-level knowledge-representation framework that can be used to solve problems declaratively based on abductive reasoning. It extends normal logic programming by allowing some predicates to be incompletel ...

, was supervised by

Robert Kowalski Robert Anthony Kowalski (born 15 May 1941) is an American-British logician and computer scientist, whose research is concerned with developing both human-oriented models of computing and computational models of human thinking. He has spent mo ...

. After working as an intern in Japan and as a postdoctoral researcher in Greece, she returned to Imperial College as a lecturer in 2000. She was appointed as JP Morgan/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Argumentation in 2020.

Recognition

Toni is a Fellow of the

European Association for Artificial Intelligence The European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) (formerly European Co-ordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI)) is the representative body for the European artificial intelligence community. EurAI was established in 19 ...

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Toni, Francesca Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Italian computer scientists Italian women computer scientists University of Pisa alumni Alumni of Imperial College London Academics of Imperial College London Fellows of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence