Nicole Novielli

Nicole Novielli, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

 

Floor: 6th, room #663
Phone: +39 080 544 3261
Fax: +39 080 544 2031
Email: nicole.novielli_AT_uniba.it
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Nicole Novielli is an Associate Professor at the University of Bari, Italy. Her expertise is in Affective Computing. Since 2006, her research is on human factors and emotions in natural language interaction. She is a member of the COLLAB research group, whose research is in Software Engineering and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, with focus on collaborative software development. She is involved in the Italian AI PhD program (AI & Società)

Further Information

Research Interests

  • Affective Computing
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Software Engineering
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Human Aspects in Software Engineering
  • Sentiment Analysis and Emotion Mining
  • Multimodal Emotion Recognition
  • Social Media and Online Communities
  • Natural Dialogue Simulation and Analysis
I am broadly interested in how to recognize and exploit affective and cognitive states in computer-supported cooperative work and human-computer interaction. In particular, I focus on interactions in natural language, which I study both in human-human computer-mediated communication and in interaction with intelligent interfaces.

Research Projects

  • EmoQuest (Principal Investigator) – “Investigating the Role of Emotions in Online Question & Answer Sites”. The project was funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research under the program “SIR – Scientific Independence of young Researchers” (Bando SIR 2014)
  • EMPATHY – “Empowering People in Dealing with Internet of Things Ecosystems” (Bando PRIN 2017). She is the coordinator of the Research Unit of the University of Bari.
  • FAIR – “Future Artificial Intelligence Research” . She is the Co-PI del WP 1 dello Spoke 6: Symbiotic AI, Università degli Studi di Bari. Progetto finanziato dal Mur nell’ambito dell’Azione 1.3, “Creazione di “Partenariati estesi alle università, ai centri di ricerca, alle aziende per il finanziamento di progetti di ricerca di base”, (Decreto Direttoriale n. 341 del 15 marzo 2022)
  • QualAI (Principal Investigator) – “Continuous Quality Improvement of AI-based Systems”. The project was funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research under the program PRIN 2022

Datasets and Tools

  • EMTk, the emotion-mining toolkit that comprises the following software and manually annotated gold standard for emotion and polarity:
    • EmoTxt: a toolkit for emotion recognition from text, trained and tested on a gold standard of about 9K question, answers, and comments from online interactions [Tool][Paper]
    • Senti4SD: a classifier specifically trained to support sentiment analysis in developers’ communication channels [Tool and Dataset] [Paper]
  • QAvMentor: a virtual mentor service and (Chrome) plugin for Stack Overflow
  • A Gold Standard for Emotion Annotation in Stack Overflow. [Dataset][Paper]
  • Anger and Its Direction in Collaborative Software Development [Dataset] [Paper]
  • SEA: A Lexicon for Emotional Arousal in Software Engineering. [Lexicon] [Paper]
  • RESTful API to retrieve approx user reputation on Stack Overflow
  • SENTIPOLC (SENTIment POLarity Classification) of Italian Tweets [Dataset] [Paper]
  • Q&A Best-Answer Prediction Dataset (ESEM’16)

Education and Background

  • Senior Research assistant at the CDG, Collaborative Development Group, Department of Informatics, University of Bari.
  • Research assistant at the Intelligent Interfaces research group, Department of Informatics, University of Bari.
  • Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Bari (May 2010). Thesis on “Lexical Semantics of Dialogue Acts” (advisor dr. C. Strapparava)
  • Master’s degree in ‘Computer Science – Knowldege and Software Engineering’ (Sept. 2006) – University of Bari, Italy (full marks and honours)
  • Bachelor’s degree in ‘Computer Science’ (Jul. 2004) – University of Bari (full marks and honours)
  • Visiting researcher at the University of Southern California (USA) – Institute for Creative Technologies (Jul-Sept 2007)
  • Visiting researcher at the University of Aberdeen (UK) Department of Computing Science, NLG group (Oct 2007-Dec 2007)
  • Visiting researcher at FBK-irst Trento (Italy) – HLT Division (several periods from Feb 2007 to Nov 2010)

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science in May 2010 from the University of Bari discussing a thesis on ‘Lexical Semantics of Dialogue Acts’ (advisor Dr. Carlo Strapparava). The thesis project started in January 2007 as a follow-up of the research experience in the Humaine EU project, under the supervision of Prof. Fiorella de Rosis and has been conducted in cooperation with the Human-Language Technologies division of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK-irst) in Trento. The work developed in the Ph.D. thesis falls under the fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Affective Computing.

In Sept. 2006 I received a Master’s degree in ‘Computer Science – Software and Knowledge Engineering’, University of Bari, Italy with full marks and honours (Advisor Prof. F. de Rosis, thesis title “Automatic Recognition of Affective States in Natural Language Dialogs”). The thesis was developed in cooperation with the Institut für Informatik, University of Erlangen (Dr. A. Batliner), in the scope of the Humaine EU project.

In Jul. 2004 I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, University of Bari (full marks and honours), Advisor Prof. F. de Rosis Thesis title “A Markup Language for Annotating Affective States in Persuasion Dialogs”. The thesis has been developed in the scope of the SOCRATES Program, at the University of Liverpool, Dept. of Computer Science, under the supervision of Dr. Floriana Grasso.

Teaching (in Italian)

  • A. Y. 2025/26 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2025/26 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, Informatica e Comunicazione Digitale (Taranto) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2024/25 – ‘Sentiment Analysis’,  Laurea Magistrale in Data Science [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2024/25 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2023/24 – ‘Sentiment Analysis’,  Laurea Magistrale in Data Science [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2023/24 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2022/23 – ‘Sentiment Analysis’,  Laurea Magistrale in Data Science [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2022/23 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2021/22 – ‘Sentiment Analysis’,  Laurea Magistrale in Data Science
  • A. Y. 2021/22 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z)
  • A. Y. 2020/21 – ‘Sentiment Analysis’,  Laurea Magistrale in Data Science [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2020/21 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori’, Informatica [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2019/20 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori‘, Informatica [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2018/19 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori‘, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2017/18 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori‘, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z) [Programma]
  • A. Y. 2016/17 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori‘, ITPS, Corso B (M-Z).
  • A. Y. 2016/17 – Agenti Intelligenti, Laurea Magistrale in Informatica.
  • A. Y. 2015/16 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori‘, Informatica, sede di Brindisi.
  • A. Y. 2014/15 – ‘Reti di Calcolatori‘, Informatica, sede di Brindisi.
  • A.Y. 2012/13 – Laboratory sessions (teaching and practice) of of the course ‘Informatics’ (C programming), BSc in Physics, year 1, with exam responsibility.
  • A.Y. 2011/12: Laboratory sessions of the course ‘Computer Architecture’. BSc in Informatics, year 2, University of Bari. Assistant lecturer, with exam responsibility.
  • A.Y. 2010/11: ‘Web Programming’, BSc in Informatics, year 3, University of Bari. Main lecturer, with exam responsibility.
  • A.Y. 2010/11: Laboratory sessions of the course of ‘Computer Networks and Digital Communication’. BSc in Informatics, year 2, University of Bari. Assistant lecturer, with exam responsibility.
  • A.Y. 2009/10: Series of seminars on Natural Language Processing (Understanding and Generation) for the course ‘Agenti per la comunicazione digitale’ (Agents for digital communication), MSc in Informatics, year 1.
  • A.Y. 2008/09: Laboratory sessions of the course of ‘Programming Language’. BSc in Informatics, year 2, University of Bari.
  • A.Y. 2007/08: Series of seminars concerning Logical Reasoning, Surface Natural Language Realisation (with SimpleNLG) and Natural Language Understanding (LSA and Probabilistic Grammar approaches for recognition of communicative acts or affective cues spotting in the language), MSc in Informatics, year 1.

Professional Service

Organizing Committee Member

  • ICSME 2024 – Journal-First Track Co-Chair – The 40th International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution
  • ICSE 2023 – Posters and Informal Demos Track Co-Chair – The 45th International Conference on Software Engineering
  • SANER 2023 – Program Co-Chair – 30th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering
  • MSR 2022 – Program Co-chair – The Mining Software Repositories 2022 Conference
  • ICSE 2022 – Publicity Co-Chair – The 44th International Conference on Software Engineering
  • SANER 2022 – REproducibility Studies and NEgative Results (RENE) Track Co-Chair – 29th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering
  • ICPC 2021 – REplications and NEgative Results (RENE) Track Co-chair – 29th International Conference on Program Comprehension
  • SSBSE 2021 – General Co-chair – 13th Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering
  • ICGSE/ICSSP 2021 – Doctoral Track Co-Chair – The joined conferences on International Online Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE) and the International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP)
  • SSBSE 2020 – General co-chair – 12th Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering
  • MSR 2020 – Publicity co-chair – the 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories
  • ICSME 2020 – New Ideas track co-chair – 36th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution
  • SANER 2020 – Late Breaking Ideas track co-chair – 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering
  • DocGen2 – Challenge co-chair – 2nd Software Documentation Generation Challenge, collocated with ICSME 2020
  • Data Showcase Co-chair for the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2019)
  • Local organizing committee member for the 6th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2019)
  • Co-chair of the 6th Evaluation Campaign of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian (EVALITA 2018)
  • Co-organizer of the First International Workshop on Affective Computing for Requirements Engineering (AffectRE 2018), co-locate with RE 2018
  • Co-chair of the Emotions@AISB 2018 Symposium on Emotion Modeling and Detection in Social Media and Online Interaction, part of the 2018 Convention organised by the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB 2018)
  • Area chair for the ‘NLP for Web and Social Media’, the 4th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2017)
  • Co-organizer of the First International Workshop on Emotion Awareness in Software Engineering (SEmotion 2016), co-located with ICSE 2016
  • Co-organizer of the Second International Workshop on Emotion Awareness in Software Engineering (SEmotion 2017), co-located with ICSE 2017
  • Co-organizer of the SENTIPOLC task on SENTIment POLarity Classification for the 5th Evaluation Campaign of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian (EVALITA 2016)
  • Member of the publicity team for the 8th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE 2013)

Program Committee Member

Conferences

  • ICSE 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 (Main Track)
  • ESEC/FSE 2022 (Main Track)
  • ESEC/FSE 2021 (Main Track) – Distinguished Reviewer Award
  • ICSME 2021 (Main Track) – Distinguished Reviewer Award
  • MSR 2021 (Main Track) –  Distinguished Reviewer Award
  • MSR 2019 (Main Track)
  • MSR 2020 (Mining Challenge and Registered Report tracks)
  • REFSQ 2020, 2021
  • SANER 2020 (Main Track)
  • RE 2019 (Main Track)
  • ASE 2019 (Demonstrations Track)
  • ICSME 2019
  • ICSME 2018
  • CSCW 2018
  • AAMAS 2019
  • CLiC-it (since 2016)
  • DSAA (2016-2018) Special Session on Emotion and Sentiment in Intelligent Systems and Big Social Data Analysis (SentISData)
  • ACII 2017, 2015
  • ICPC 2017

Workshops

  • AffectRE 2019, co-located with RE 2019
  • SEmotion (since 2016), co-located with ICSE
  • CHASE (since 2017), co-located with ICSE
  • SoHeal 2019, 2020, co-located with ICSE
  • BotSE 2020, co-located with ICSE
  • CMNA 2019, 19th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument
  • NL4AI 2018 and 2017 co-located with AIxIA
  • Doctoral Consortium of AI*IA 2018
  • ESSEM since 2015, co-located with ACII 2017
  • AI*HCI 2013 – Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI);
  • User Models for Motivational Systems 2010, 2011, 2012, co-located with Persuasive

Reviewer

  • IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), IEEE Computer Society
  • Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), Springer
  • ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), ACM
  • Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), Elsevier
  • IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, IEEE Computer Society
  • Requirements Engineering, Springer
  • Information and Software Technology (IST), Elsevier
  • ACM Transactions on Internet Technologies (ACM ToIT), ACM
  • Natural Language Engineering, Cambridge Journals
  • Behaviour & Information Technology, Taylor & Francis
  • ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TIIS), ACM
  • Communications of the ACM (CACM), ACM
  • Speech Communication, Elsevier

Member of Editorial Board of International Journals

Guest Editor 

Publications

Journals