Luca Mannella is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Control and Computer Engineering working in the intersection of Cybersecurity, the Internet of Things (IoT), Software Engineering, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
He received his PhD in Computer and Control Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 2024 with the thesis “Securing IoT Gateways in Smart Home Environments“.

Figure 1: Research activities intersection.

Bachelor and Master

Luca obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Politecnico di Torino with a final score of 110/110.
As a student, Luca was a member of JEToP (the Politecnico’s Junior Enterprise), and he contributed to the foundation of the Mu Nu Chapter of IEEE-HKN, a local section of a worldwide honor society that promotes worthy students and professionals in the fields of interest of IEEE.
He realized his master’s thesis titled “Heuristics and Evolutionary Algorithm for Android Malware Signature Optimization” at the same university under the supervision of Giovanni Squillero and Andrea Marcelli. His thesis focused on developing and improving a Python tool (YaYaGen) that generates rules to detect Android malware.

Working Experience and Research Activities

In September 2018, Luca obtained the professional qualification for the profession of ICT engineer (abiliatazione professionale).

From September 2018 to October 2020, he worked in the IoT & Pervasive Technology research area of LINKS Foundation.
His activities were focused on the development and maintenance of internal assets and on the development and management activities of research projects focused on IoT technologies like MONICA and INCIT-EV.

From November 2020 to October 2024, Luca was enrolled in the Ph.D. in Computer and Control Engineering of Politecnico di Torino under the supervision of professors Fulvio Corno and Antonio Lioy. The main goal of his Ph.D. was to support developers in creating more secure IoT systems, with a specific focus on Smart Home Gateways.

From March 2024, Luca has been a research assistant within the SMILIES research group. He mainly works on automotive cybersecurity projects and is involved in the COLTRANE-V research project.
Among the current projects, Luca is working in strict cooperation with Nicola Scarano on creating a framework for Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) in automotive security, also called SOCMATI: Social Media Automotive Threat Intelligence.

Figure 2: High-level overview of the SOCMATI framework.