Research Lines

Cristiana Bolchini graduated with a thesis on Design for Testability (DfT) techniques for digital devices, devoted to the design and prototype implementation of an expert system -- dubbed CASTOR -- to support the designer in introducing DfT elements to allow an easy off-line test of complex digital systems, considering various trade-offs between area overheads and testability improvement.

Starting with her Ph.D. in Automation and Computer Engineering under the supervision of Prof. D. Sciuto, the design of digital devices and their reliability properties with respect to the occurrence of faults during their operational life have become her primary research interest, investigating issues related to Totally Self-Checking (TSC) and Fault Tolerant (FT) design techniques at various abstraction levels, design space exploration with metrics based on reliability aspects, system specifications to support reliability requirements.

More recently, she started a collaboration with Proff. L. Tanca and F. A. Schreiber on the design of very small databases for smart cards and portable embedded systems, leading to a new active research line on context-awareness in data. More specifically, the group investigates issues related to data design, integration, customization and tailoring, driven by the user's context, envisioned as the set of elements (e.g., role, interests, situation, device, ...) that influence the user's access to data.

More details on the two reseach activities can be found on the specific web sites:

A few proposals for PhD research lines are available here. Interested PhD candidates can also propose different research theses in the identified areas.