Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart

Giovanni Falzone

Computer Engineer, AI enthusiast

Who am I

  • Caltanissetta, Sicily

    I'm a technology enthusiast born in Sicily and moving around following my passion. The first toy that I remember was an old DOS personal computer when my father moved to a machine with Windows 95.

    Since I remember I liked opening, breaking, fixing and thinkering with everything provided of a microchip and mechanical parts.

    I decided to study in a Classical high school but my passion was the tech so continued it in my little free time and with extra-curriculum courses like Robotics and Programming in other schools.

  • 2010 - 2016

    Pisa, Tuscany, Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering

    Once finished the high school I moved in Pisa to start the bachelor degree in Computer Engineering at University of Pisa, during my free time I continued growing my passion developing personal projects and making experience with Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

    Completed the Bachelor degree in 2016 I decided to continue studying for the master's degree in Embedded Computing System at Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and University of Pisa

  • 2016 - 2020

    Pisa, Tuscany, Master degree in Embedded Computing Systems

    The master's degree courses were amazing, full of applyied projects, the time was never enough but the passion helped to continue working day by day.

    The courses spreads on several topics regarding Hardware, Real Time Systems, Vrtualization, IoT, Machine learning, Virtual and Augmented Realty, Industrial Application and Innovation, Robotics, Mechatronis...

  • 2020 - now

    Zurich, Switzerland, Internship

    Huawei Zurich Research Center, Research Assistant Intern, AI Team.

Education

Master's degree in Embedded Computing Systems

Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, University of Pisa
2016 - 2019

Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering

University of Pisa
2010 - 2016

Experience and Activities

Huawei Zurich Research Center

Internship as Software Developer/Research Assistant in the AI team

July 2020 - December 2020

DATE-19 conference Volunteer

Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference

March 2019

Samsung Innovation Camp

It is an extra online and physical course for a selected number of students, it focus on business and product innovation, KPI and business strategies, it is a collaboration between Universities, Samsung and other partners

Autumn 2018

Internet Festival Volunteer

October 2018

Internet Festival Volunteer

Volunteer helping on the management of the festival

October 2017

Certificates

Edx ETHx Agile Software Development
Samsung Innovation Camp
CCNA Exploration: Accessing the WAN
CCNA Exploration: LAN Switching and Wireless
CCNA Exploration: Routing Protocols and Concepts
CCNA Exploration: Network Fundamentals

Awards & Acknowledgements

  • 2nd Place - University of Pisa - Samsung Innovation camp 2018
  • Contribution to IEEE Conference paper for IJCNN 2018, "A Neural System for Faithful Color Reproduction in Industrial Printing Processes". Author of the ICAART 2021 Conference Paper "Simulation framework to train intelligent agents towards an assisted driving power wheelchair for people with disability".
  • Contribution to IEEE Conference paper for IJCNN 2018, "A Neural System for Faithful Color Reproduction in Industrial Printing Processes".

Skills

Tools
Programming Languages
Softskills
  • Team work
  • Problem Solving
  • Critical Thinking
  • Work Ethic

Projects

Assisted Driving Simulation framework to train Deep learning agents

As master thesis work I developed a software framework to execute a Deep Reinforcement learning algorithm exploiting an Autonomous driving Simulator. The system has been designed, developed and tested for the power wheelchairs.

Linber, IPC/RPC Linux kernel driver module

Linber is a IPC/RPC mechanism implemented as driver module in the linux kernel, it allow a Server application to register its service and a Client application to send a request with an associated deadline to one of the registered services.

ESSTA, Energy Saving Smart-home distributed Temperature Application

ESSTA is a distributed system with the aim to control the temperature in a distributed environment, it is composed by one control panel and multiple room’s units communicating on top of the Xbee 802.15.

  • RTOS
  • OSEK
  • StateFlow

Robotic Arm Inspector

Robotic arm prototype to inspect the under vehicle mechanical components; it is realized on top of ROS and simulated in a gazebo environment for an train’s pad inspector.

  • ROS

A Neural System for Faithful Color Reproduction in Industrial Printing Processes

A MATLAB tool used to generate and label the dataset used to train and test a Multi Layer Perceptron to perceive the difference between color patches in Industrial Printing.

  • MATLAB

IoT Bike Sharing Service

An IoT oriented Bike sharing service running on top of oM2M architecture. The edge hardware mounted on each bike is implemented using Contiki OS and simulated in Cooja.

  • REST
  • CoAP
  • Contiki

Real Time Domotic Control Panel

A soft Real Time domotic application realized on top of ERIKA RTOS. The system is composed by LCD touch screen monitor, HTTP server, several sensors as Temperature, Humidity, PIR, Gas sensor and a relay actuator.

  • RTOS
  • Arduino

Smart Home Hub for Wearable devices, Wearable fall detector

The project is a part of the Industrial Application and Innovation course. It’s composed by a wearable device to run the fall detection algorithm and a middle node hub to connect the wearable devices and comunicate with the Server.

  • RTOS
  • MATLAB

Convolutional Code Generator

VHDL implementation of a parametric Convolutional Code Generator to reinforce the comunication over a noise channel.

  • VHDL
  • Xilinx

Interests

Apart from being a software developer, I enjoy most of my time being outdoors, taking pictures of the nature and architecture.

When forced indoors, I follow a number of sci-fi genre movies and television shows, I spend a large amount of my free time exploring the latest technology innovations.

I like to spend four hours a week going to study and practice english in an english class together with people coming from other fields.

In my future I’d like to learn German and Spanish as well as becoming a system developer and grow in the direction of project managemnet.

I enjoy talking about innovative solutions, Artificial Intelligence and how the technology will change the world in the close and far future.

Motivation & Quotes

  • We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

    John F. Kennedy

  • If not us, who? If not now, when?

    John F. Kennedy

  • It always seems impossible until it's done.

    Nelson Mandela

  • There are 24h in a day, I have no time... Well, then just sleep faster.

    Arnold Schwarzenegger

  • Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that? I didn't either—because #1,001 was the light bulb. ... Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.!

    Denzel Washington

  • The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

    Lao Tzu

  • If the design is taking too long the design is wrong.

    E.Musk

  • The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.

    B.Franklin

  • If anything can go wrong, it will.

    Murphy's law

  • If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time.

    Peter Drucker

  • A good developer doesn’t know everything, but is ready to learn new things when they become needed.

  • It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

    Antoine de Saint-exupery

  • Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart.

    Steve Jobs