Engineering at ITADATA 2026

From 10 to 12 November, Engineering will take part in ITADATA 2026 – The Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science, in Bari. The event provides an opportunity for academia and industry to come together and discuss the latest developments of the sector.

Engineering’s Research & Innovation team will contribute to the programme with several presentations showcasing projects, technologies and research results across areas ranging from Data Spaces and Digital Twins to AI and data valorisation.

11 November | Federated Learning and Anomaly Detection
Engineering will present two contributions during the session dedicated to Federated Learning and Anomaly Detection:

• Rossella Omana Mancilla, Technical Researcher Senior, will present BACON (Anomaly-Based Component for Intrusion Detection), a prototype developed within the TELEMETRY project that uses Federated Learning to detect network anomalies in distributed environments while preserving data privacy.

• Marcantonio La Franca, Associate R&I Project Manager, will present the scientific paper “Federated Digital Twins on Data Spaces: An Architectural Framework”, developed within the IPCEI-CIS AVANT project and focused on an architecture integrating federated Digital Twins and Data Spaces.

11 November | Database and Querying
Fabio Picariello, Technical Researcher Advisor, will present two scientific papers during the Database and Querying session:

• “GRACE: Parallel Best-of-N Multi-Agent Analysis of Closed-Form Questions over Dataframes with Guardrail Selection and Adaptive Retry” proposes an approach in which multiple AI agents work together to improve automated data analysis. It selects the best solutions generated and adapts subsequent attempts to improve accuracy.

• “Adaptive-Elbow Graph Traversal for Schema Retrieval in Text-to-SQL” introduces a method for finding relevant database structures and the relationships between them. It improves the accuracy of Text-to-SQL systems, which translate questions written in natural language into database queries.

11 November | Building Resilient Data Ecosystems
Engineering will also play an active role in the workshop “Building Resilient Data Ecosystems”, which will bring together experiences and results from several European projects:

• Davide Dalle Carbonare, R&I Business Partner and Industrial Board representative, will open the workshop with the Welcome and Introduction.

• Gabriele Giunta, Technical Manager, and Mattia Marzano, IT Architecture Design Specialist, will contribute on behalf of the ENDURANCE project, sharing its activities and experience within the workshop.

• Vincenzo Croce, R&I Project Manager, and Manlio Serio, Technical Researcher Specialist, will contribute on behalf of AVANT, presenting the results of activities dedicated to Digital Twins for the energy sector, with a focus on the DT4Energy architecture, Data Spaces and DT Energy Communities.

12 November | Industry I

• Vincenzo Croce, R&I Project Manager, will present the scientific paper “DT4Energy: Open AI-Driven Digital Twins for Energy Systems – DT4EC Use Case”, a contribution developed within AVANT focusing on the application of open, AI-driven Digital Twins to energy systems.

12 November | Industry II

• Antonio Filograna, R&I Project Manager, and Francesca D'Agresti, Technical Researcher Specialist, will present the scientific paper “From heterogeneous Open Data to decision support: a modular Platform for smart rural area management”. Developed within the SMARTERA project, the contribution explores the use of heterogeneous Open Data to support decision-making processes for smart rural area management.

Through these contributions, Engineering brings to ITADATA 2026 the expertise and experience gained through its research and innovation projects, contributing to the dialogue between the scientific community and industry on the evolution of data-driven ecosystems and technologies for data valorisation.