About

Building AI that earns the right to inform clinical decisions.

I work where computer vision meets medicine — designing deep-learning systems that turn raw biomedical signals into trustworthy diagnostic evidence.

I'm an MSc student in Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Cagliari and an Orthogonal Scholar with the ELICSIR Foundation — one of twenty Master's students nationwide invited into a competitive excellence program funded by Schmidt Sciences.

My research targets deep learning for medical image analysis: peripheral-blood-smear diagnosis, foundation models for cell segmentation, and ensemble strategies for low-data clinical regimes.

BSc Final Grade
110L
Summa Cum Laude
BSc GPA
29.83 / 30
Applied AI
Orthogonal Scholar
Top 20
in Italy
Excellence Program
Waiting
Results
Currently
  • —Waiting admission results to the Faculty Excellence Program.
  • —Active in the ELICSIR Orthogonal School — research sprints, seminars and weekend workshops.
  • —An international research collaboration is in the making — more soon.
Research interests
Computer VisionMedical AIFoundation ModelsImage ProcessingEnsemble LearningClinical Decision SupportSelf-Supervised Learning
Research & Experience

Selected research and engineering work.

From medical-imaging foundation models to operations-research solvers — a snapshot of recent work across the applied-AI spectrum.

Nov 2024 — Apr 2025Research Intern · BSc ThesisLead author

Peripheral Blood Smear Image Analysis for TTP Diagnosis

University of Cagliari · Medical AI Group

  • Engineered a deep-learning framework for the automated analysis of peripheral blood smear images.
  • Implemented high-precision cell segmentation using Cellpose foundation models.
  • Built a custom Single-Cell Dataset by generating bounding boxes and classifying regions of interest.
  • Boosted predictive performance through Data Augmentation and Ensemble Learning.
PythonPyTorchCellposeScikit-Learn
2025Academic Project · MSc

Unsupervised Clustering on High-Dimensional Data

University of Cagliari · Applied AI

  • Comparative analysis of clustering algorithms on the mfeat-karhunen dataset.
  • Designed a preprocessing pipeline to mitigate the curse of dimensionality.
  • Evaluated cluster quality across 2D → 64D subspaces using internal and external validation metrics.
PythonScikit-learnPandasPCA
2025Academic Project · MSc

Supply Chain Network Optimization (UFLP)

University of Cagliari · Operations Research

  • Developed exact and heuristic solutions for the Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem.
  • Modeled Strong vs. Weak MILP formulations in Gurobi, analyzing LP relaxation tightness.
  • Implemented constructive heuristics achieving near-optimal solutions with reduced runtime.
PythonGurobiMILPHeuristics
Education

Academic trajectory.

A deliberate path through Italy’s most selective programs, anchored by curiosity rather than résumé-padding.

2026

[ Coming soon ]

Incoming

—

  • Details to be announced soon. An international research collaboration is in the making.

University of Cagliari

Sep 2025 — Present

MSc · Computer Science — Applied Artificial Intelligence

GPA 30 / 30

Cagliari, Italy

  • Concentration on Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Image Processing and Medical AI.
  • Final stages of admission to the Faculty Excellence Program — reserved for top-percentile graduate researchers.

ELICSIR Foundation · Orthogonal School

Sep 2025 — Present

Excellence Program — Orthogonal Scholar

Top 20 in Italy

Italy

  • Selected — alongside 19 other Master’s students nationwide — for a competitive two-year excellence program funded by Schmidt Sciences.
  • High-level seminars, research sprints, and workshops with leading figures across academia and industry.

University of Cagliari

Sep 2022 — Sep 2025

BSc · Computer Science

110 / 110 cum Laude

Cagliari, Italy

  • GPA 29.83 / 30 — Best Student Award 2024/2025 (1st Place, third-year cohort).
  • Thesis: “Peripheral Blood Smear Image Analysis — a Framework for the Diagnosis of TTP”.
Tech stack

Tools of the trade.

The languages, libraries and frameworks I reach for to ship reliable AI systems.

Languages
  • PythonPrimary
  • C
  • Java
  • OCaml
  • SQL
ML / Vision
  • PyTorch
  • Cellpose
  • OpenCV
  • Scikit-learn
Data & Tools
  • NumPy
  • Pandas
  • Gurobi
  • CUDA
Honors & Awards

A few recognitions along the way.

Selective scholarships, top-of-class awards, and invitations to high-tier research programs.

Award icon

Orthogonal Scholarship

2025

ELICSIR Foundation · Schmidt Sciences

Two-year excellence scholarship awarded to the top 20 Master’s students in Italy.

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Best Student Award — 1st Place

2024 / 2025

University of Cagliari

Top of class among third-year Computer Science students (BSc cohort).

Award icon

National Register of Excellence

2022

Italian Ministry of Education

Inducted for outstanding performance among Italian high-school graduates.

Conferences & Summer Schools

Where I’ve been learning.

Selected research events, summer schools, and curated weekends I’ve taken part in as an Orthogonal Scholar.

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BOOST 25 Summer School

2025

ELICSIR Foundation

Bologna · Italy

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Futuro Annunciato

2025

ELICSIR Foundation

Venice · Italy

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I Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Italy

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II Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Italy

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III Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Italy

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IV Weekend Ortogonale

2025 / 2026

ELICSIR · Orthogonal School

Italy

Get in touch

Let's build something meaningful.

Open to research collaborations, visiting positions and conversations.

cloud.neffe@gmail.comarrow
© Nicola FigusCagliari · Italy