
About Me
Ciao! I am Gloria a PhD Student under the ELLIS Programme. I am supervised by Claire Vernade @ Uneversity of Nuremberg and Marlos C. Machado @ Univeristy of Alberta. My primary research interest is in reinforcement learning theory. Prior to that, I obtained my BSc and MSc at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. I worked with Prof. Francesco Trovò and Prof. Alberto Maria Metelli in AIrLab during my master thesis. Previously I was a data science intern working on applied Reinforcement Learning at MLCube.
In my free time I enjoy bouldering🧗🏻♀️, running🏃♀️, playing guitar🎸 and I am a big fan of the magic AS Roma🐺.
Latest News
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September 15, 2025 - I am Joining the ELLIS PhD Programme supervised By Claire Vernade and Marlos C. Machado
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May 08, 2025 - I gave a talk for Polimi Data Scientist on Reinforcement Learning x Ads
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May 07, 2025 - I will attend M2L in Split this September (18% accepted applicants)
Projects
Tennis Match Analysis using Computer Vision
- Detected ball trajectory, players, and court from tennis videos using Tracknet and numerical methods.
- Implemented trajectory smoothing using the RDP algorithm.
- Extracted 2D and 3D ball bounce coordinates using geometrical and analytical techniques.
Claim Veracity Prediction using Sentence Bert
- Performed advanced text data cleaning and converted JSON data into CSV format.
- Applied clustering and tSNE for nonlinear dimensionality reduction and data exploration.
- Trained a custom classifier to efficiently embed question–answer pairs.
- Developed an ensemble model for claim classification achieving 0.83 accuracy.
- Built a pipeline to generate justifications for claim veracity using a T5 model.
Simulation of Dynamic Pricing and Online Bidding in Stationary and Non-Stationary Environments
- Modeled user purchase behavior and auction dynamics in both stationary and non-stationary environments achieving sub-linear regret with algorithms like GP-UCB, Thompson Sampling, and EXP3.
- Designed and tested bidding strategies for truthful and non-truthful auctions, comparing Multiplicative Pacing and UCB under varying budgets.
- Applied change detection methods (UCB1-CUSUM) to adapt to market shifts.
- Analyzed multi-item auctions and pricing strategies to optimize sales dynamics.
Prediction of Parkinson Development using Protein Data
- Led a team from problem formulation to poster presentation.
- Analyzed protein abundance data from cerebrospinal fluid samples alongside clinical data (e.g., UPDRS scores, medication usage).
- Conducted t-tests to identify key proteins with significant expression differences.
- Developed a regression model to capture shifts across selected proteins.
- Presented findings in a poster session at a scientific showcase.
Publications
- “Can you be my mum?” Manipulating SocialRobots in the Large Language Models Era
Giulio Antonio Abbo, Gloria Desideri, Tony Belpaeme, Micol Spitale
2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ‘25) (2025)
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2501.046332
Awards
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2nd Place Google Developer Student’s Club AI Hack 2025 (2025)
Built an application for personalised text re-elaboration based on online learning -
Lead The Future Mentorship (2024)
Among the few Italian students selected to be mentees for LeadTheFuture, a leading mentorship non-profit organization for students in STEM, with acceptance rate below 13% -
2nd Place Google Developer Student’s Club AI Hack 2024 (2024)
Built an application for financial education powered with LLMs