1. General Information. Salvatore Cavalieri was born in Catania in 1965. In 1989, he received the "Laurea" Degree (i.e. five-years Master Degree) in Electronic Engineering at the University of Catania. In 1993, he achieved the Ph.D. in Electronic and Computer Engineering. In 1994, he achieved a scholarship for a Post-Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Catania. In 1994 and 1998, he became Researcher and Associate Professor in Computer Engineering at the University of Catania, respectively. Currently he is Full Professor in Computer Engineering at the Department of Electrical Electronic and Computer Engineering (DIEEI) at the University of Catania.

2. Teaching Activities. The teaching activity carried out by Salvatore Cavalieri mainly involved courses included in the bachelor degree and in the post-graduate master's degree of Computer Engineering at the University of Catania. Among them, there are: -Foundations of Computer Science, for the bachelor degree in Computer Engineering, from 1993 till 2015; -Industrial Informatics, for the post-graduate master's degree in Computer Engineering, from 1998 till now; -Operating Systems, for the bachelor degree in Computer Engineering, from 2015 till now;

3. Academic Activities. During his academic career, Cavalieri Salvatore carried out several activities on behalf of the University of Catania. The most significant are those explained in the following. -From 1999 to 2013, he has been appointed to represent the University of Catania inside several Scientific and Technical Committees of IFTS (Istruzione e Formazione Tecnica Superiore) courses funded by Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). The courses were jointly organised by University of Catania and several second level schools for high school graduates; Scientific and Technical Committees had the aim to supervise the entire training process foreseen by the IFTS courses. For some of these committees, Salvatore Cavalieri played the role of President. -From 2003 to 2005, Salvatore Cavalieri was coordinator of a 2nd Level Master's Degree entitled "Information Technology Excellence Road (ITER)", carried out by the University of Catania. The 2nd Level Master's Degree was funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), upon a project proposed by Salvatore Cavalieri. -From 2010 He is representative of the University of Catania to the Board of Directors of the Consortium CINI (Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica, www.consorzio-cini.it). -From 2007 to 2017, he was appointed representative of the University of Catania in the Board of Directors of the Consortium COMETA (Consorzio Multi-Ente per la promozione e l'adozione di Tecnologie di calcolo Avanzato, www.consorzio-cometa.it), for three consecutive three-year periods (2007-2011, 2011-2014 and 2014-2017). In the last two periods (2011-2013 and 2014-2017) he played the role of President of the Board of Directors, as well as the legal representative of the Consortium COMETA.

4. Research Activities. During his academic career, Professor Salvatore Cavalieri carried out several research activities, whose relevant results appeared on more than 160 publications, mainly on international journals and international conferences. The research activities involve the following main areas:

• Soft Computing. The activity on the soft computing mainly focused on neural networks, but has been extended also to the study and application of fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms. The research in the area of neural networks involved proposal of new applications of neural networks and definition of new neural network models. The research activity involved the integration of neural networks and fuzzy logic and the development of new applications of fuzzy logic. About genetic algorithms, also in this case the research activities have been characterized by the integration of neural networks and genetic algorithms, and by the development of new applications of genetic algorithms in several engineering fields like the automation systems.
• Modelling. Several modelling techniques and tools have been applied to distributed computer systems to realise particular studies based on performance analysis. Studies includes fault tolerance, congestion control algorithms and analysis of novel enhancement of specific protocols. The most part of these research activities has involved Petri Nets-based modelling tools.
• High Performance Computing. The most part of the researches focused on Grid computing and was carried out inside some European projects. Studies about jobs scheduling in a Grid computing environment has been mainly developed.
• Computer Network. A lot of research activities related to communication networks and protocols have been carried out in different directions. Several strategies to improve implementation efficiency of communication protocols have been proposed and evaluated. Performance evaluation of existing communication systems focused on the study of the main features of certain protocols, with a great attention to those oriented to the industrial, home and building automation environments. Many research activities focused on the proposal of modification of some feature of communication protocols, and the relevant performance evaluation aimed to demonstrate the advantages in the adoption of the proposals.
• Industrial Informatics. A large part of the research activities has involved several themes related to industrial informatics. In particular, many studies have been carried out about standard protocols used to exchange data between industrial applications. Most part of these studies have involved the OPC UA standard (www.opcfoundation.org), used many time to enhance interoperability in different industrial scenarios, proposing its integration with other data exchange protocols aiming to make them more interoperable; example of these proposals are about integration of OPC UA with KNX (home & building automation) and IEC 61850 (smartGrid) data models. Several studies about the performance evaluation of OPC UA have been also carried out in order to point out the main limitations and in order to give suggestions to their solution. In the last years, research activities inside Industry 4.0 has been carried out, mainly focusing on interoperability issues and integration of information models.

5. Funded Research Projects. Salvatore Cavalieri has been involved in many research projects funded by bodies at regional, national and European level. For some of these projects, he played the coordinator role of the local research unit; among these last projects there are: -European Project Mobicossum (advanced MOBIle COmputing Software System for Utilities Management), IST-1999-57455 (V Framework Programme), 2002-2004. Salvatore Cavalieri was the coordinator of the research activities for the University of Catania, which was one of the RTD performers involved in the project. -Project AMICO (Asset Management for Industrial COmplex plant), CUP G23F11000810004, funded by Sicilian Regional Operative Programme (POR Sicilia), call 4.1.1.2, 2013-2015. Salvatore Cavalieri was the coordinator of the research activities for the University of Catania. -Project DeTech (DEsign, cfd e TECHnologie estetiche), MI01_00260, funded by Italian Ministry for Economic Development (MISE), inside the call "Industry 2015", 2013-2015. Salvatore Cavalieri was the coordinator of local research unit.

6. Bibliometric Indicators related to Publications and Citations. In order to give information about personal indicators related to publications and citations, the h-index and the total number of citations will be provided in the following, based on Scopus and Google Scholar. -Scopus: h-index=13, total number of citations=493; -Google Scholar: H index=18, i10-index=32, total number of citations=1052.