The Department welcomes Stefano Noventa

I am a Physicist by training but my passion for interdisciplinary research has led me to pursue a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science at the University of Padua with a thesis on the application of Variational Methods to Psychophysics, under the supervision of Prof. Vidotto and Prof. Dell'Acqua. The transition from Physics to Psychophysics and Naive Physics, and from there to the study of the mathematical foundations of the measurement and statistical methods applied in the psychological, economic, and social sciences was quite natural. During my academic career I had indeed the opportunity to work at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering of the University of Toronto, at the Centro Docimologico of the University of Verona, at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology of the University of Tübingen, and at the Methods Center of the University of Tübingen, where I was exposed to different methodologies, perspectives, experiences, and scientific needs. During my time at the Methods Center at the University of Tübingen, I won a grant of national relevance funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for a project entitled “On a generalization of the local independence assumption in Item Response Theory.” My main interests currently lie in Psychometrics and Mathematical Psychology. In particular, I am working on the unification of different theories for assessment (Item Response Theory, Knowledge Structure Theory, Cognitive Diagnostic modelling) through the formal study of their foundational aspects. More generally, I am interested in the problem of measurement in psychology and in the formal foundations of mathematical psychology models in the context of mathematical logic. In my scarce spare time, I am an avid devourer of “stories,” regardless of what media contains them. I listen to music avidly, and periodically try to find time to resume torturing the piano and guitar.