On Sunday, 25 January, the National Veterinary Prevention Day was celebrated to raise awareness of the importance of preventive veterinary medicine within the integrated “One Health” approach, which brings together the health of humans, animals, and the environment.
The Day represents an event of great institutional, social, and scientific value, capable of bringing together expertise, information, and active citizen participation, with a single goal: protecting everyone’s health.
At the booth of the Special Operational Unit for Prevention and Veterinary Public Health, the MytilEx project—Extended Modeling mytilus farming System with High-Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence—was showcased. The project is developed by the High-Performance Scientific Computing (HPSC) Laboratory of the Department of Science and Technology (DiST), with Prof. Raffaele Montella as scientific coordinator. MytilEx focuses on maintaining and improving the HPC-MytilEx system, which is already operational thanks to previous research agreements. The system enables the modelling of the behaviour of potentially toxic substances in water and within farmed bivalve molluscs intended for human consumption, cultivated by licensed companies along the coasts of Campania. The tool, which is easy to consult, supports operators in the design and maintenance of mussel-farming facilities.
During the same event, at the booth dedicated to the Epidemiological Observatories of the Experimental Zooprophylactic Institute of Southern Italy, the SmokeTracer project was also promoted. Its scientific coordinator is Prof. Angelo Riccio, also from the HPSC Laboratory. SmokeTracer provides a transport and dispersion modelling service for combustion products from illegal waste burning and wildfires, aimed at planning soil and crop controls to ensure food quality and public health.
Both projects are well framed within the One Health perspective, which served as the event’s guiding theme.
Raffaele Montella is an Associate Professor with tenure in Computer Science at the Department of Science and Technologies (DiST), University of Naples “Parthenope'” (UNP), Italy. He got his degree (MSc equivalent) cum laude and an award mention to his study career in (Marine) Environmental Science at the University of Naples “Parthenope” in 1998, defending a thesis about the “Development of a GIS system for marine applications”.
He defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Environmental modeling and Grid Computing techniques” earning a Ph.D. in Marine Science and Engineering at the University of Naples “Federico II”.
His main research topics and scientific production are focused on: tools for high-performance computing, cloud computing, and GPUs with applications in the field of computational environmental science (multi-dimensional geo-referenced big data, distributed computing for modeling, and scientific workflows and science gateways) leveraging on his previous (and still ongoing) experiences in embedded, mobile, wearable, pervasive computing, and Internet of Things.
He joined the CI/RDCEP of the University of Chicago as Visiting Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor working on the FACE-IT project.
He leads the High-Performance Scientific Computing (HPSC) Laboratory and the IT infrastructure of the UNP Center for Marine and Atmosphere Monitoring and Modeling (CMMMA).
He technically led the University of Naples “Parthenope” research unit of the European Project “Heterogeneous secure multi-level Remote Acceleration service for low-Power Integrated systems and Devices (RAPID)”. His effort focused on GVirtuS development and integration (General purpose Virtualization Service), enabling CUDA kernel execution on mobile and embedded devices.
He led the locally funded project: “Modeling mytilus farming System with Enhanced web technologies (MytiluSE)” focused on high-performance computing based coupled simulations for mussels’ farms’ food quality prediction and assessment for human gastric disease mitigation.
He leads the locally funded project “MytilAI – Modeling mytilus farming with Artificial Intelligence technologies”, focused on using AI techniques for mussel pollutants contamination predictions.
He leads the research project: “DYNAMO: Distributed leisure Yacht-carried sensor-Network for Atmosphere and Marine data crOwd-sourcing applications”, targeting coastal marine data gathering as crowd-sourcing for environmental protection, development, and management.
He led the UNP unit of the Erasmus+ Project “Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE)” and is leading the UNP unit of the project “FGPE Plus: Learning tools interoperability for gamified programming education” as an ideal extension of FGPE ending in May 2021.
Since 2021 he has been head of the UNP node CINI Lab/Working Group “HPC: Key Technologies and Tools”. Since 2022 he has been the head of the AWS Academy at the University of Naples “Parthenope”.
In February 2023, he gained the Italian National Academic Qualifications as Full Professor in Computer Science (01/B1).
