Skip to content
Marco Grassia 🔬
Marco Grassia

Assistant Professor · Network Science and Machine Learning

University of Catania, Italy
NS

Workshop · NetSci 2026

NSIA 2026 — Network Science Informs AI

1 June 2026 Boston, USA · Venue TBC
About Me

I am an Assistant Professor (RTDa) in the Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering (DIEEI) at the University of Catania, Italy. I hold a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, with a dissertation on solving NP-hard graph problems through Geometric Deep Learning.

My research lies at the intersection of Network Science and Machine Learning, with a focus on novel computational methods for analysing complex networks and solving hard combinatorial optimisation problems.

Graph Neural Networks Network Science Geometric Deep Learning Combinatorial Optimisation Complex Systems

I currently conduct research at the Network Science Laboratory and contribute to ICSC (Spoke 3 — Astrophysics & Cosmos Observations), applying deep learning to astrophysical datasets. I am CTO of NetPlace and serve on the External Relations Committee of CSS/Italy (Italian Chapter of the Complex Systems Society).

Recent Publications
Marco Grassia, Valeria d'Andrea, Karolina Finc, Manlio De Domenico, Giuseppe Mangioni (2026). Machine-enhanced reconstruction of functional connectomes unravels discriminative brain sub-systems in health and disease. Scientific Reports.
URL DOI
Arsham Ghavasieh, Marco Grassia, Manlio De Domenico (2026). Influence of the reinsertion algorithm on the performance of the Vertex Entanglement method. Communications Physics.
URL DOI
Salvatore Romano, Marco Grassia, Giuseppe Mangioni (2026). Beyond MMD: Evaluating Graph Generative Models with Geometric Deep Learning.
arXiv URL
Mohammad Moradi, Morteza Moradi, Marco Grassia, Giuseppe Mangioni (2026). Brain-Grasp: Graph-Based Saliency Priors for Improved FMRI-Based Visual Brain Decoding. ICASSP 2026 - 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).
DOI
Thomas Adler, Marco Grassia, Ziheng Liao, Giuseppe Mangioni, Carlo Vittorio Cannistraci (2025). Latent Geometry-Driven Network Automata for Complex Network Dismantling. ICLR 2026.
URL DOI
See all publications
Recent & Upcoming Events
MSCx 2024: IX Mediterranean School of Complex Networks featured image
Networks

MSCx 2024: IX Mediterranean School of Complex Networks

Read more
MIX-NEXT 2023 satellite @ Net-Sci 2023 featured image
Networks

MIX-NEXT 2023 satellite @ Net-Sci 2023

Multiscale & Integrative compleX Networks: EXperiments & Theories 2023

Net-Sci 2023 satellite Vienna, Austria | 10–14 July 2023

Learn more at …

Oriol Artime, Manlio De Domenico, Valeria d'Andrea, Marco Grassia
•
Read more
MSCx 2023: VIII Mediterranean School of Complex Networks featured image
Networks

MSCx 2023: VIII Mediterranean School of Complex Networks

Read more
Recent & Upcoming Talks

Experience

Visiting Researcher

Center for Complex Network Intelligence (CCNI), Tsinghua University

Research assignment at CCNI, Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence (THBI). Focus on advanced geometric deep learning methods for complex network analysis and optimization.

Guest Lecturer — Deep Learning on Graphs

Free University of Bolzano (PhD course)

Invited lecturer for the PhD programme in Computer Science (12h of in-person lectures in English). Topics: introduction to Network Science and Geometric Deep Learning; shallow and modern GNN architectures (GCN, GAT, GraphSAGE); message-passing framework; learning tasks on networks; pooling methods; link prediction; temporal and heterogeneous graphs; applications to brain networks and network dismantling.

CTO (Chief Technology Officer)

NetPlace - Network Science Society

Responsible for the technological aspects and IT infrastructure of NetPlace, an initiative focused on scientific communication and outreach in Network Science.

Assistant Professor (RTDa)

University of Catania

Untenured Assistant Professor (Ricercatore a Tempo Determinato di tipo A, RTDa) at the Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering (DIEEI), University of Catania. Teaching:

  • Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering (LM-32):
    • Advanced Programming Languages (Oct 2025–present)
  • Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering (L-8):
    • Foundations of Programming (Oct 2023–present)
    • Foundations of Computer Science (Mar–Oct 2023)

Lecturer of Front-end Web Development

Free Mind Foundry S.R.L.

Course instructor in Front-end Web Development for the “.NET Training Program (2023)”. Topics include JavaScript, TypeScript and Angular.

Post-doctoral Researcher

University of Catania

Adjunct Professor (Professore a Contratto)

University of Catania

Adjunct professor of Foundations of Computer Science. Sections: J-Pr (2021-2022) and P-Z (2022-2023). Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering (L-8), DIEEI, University of Catania.

Researcher

Consorzio COMETA

Research on the application of Network Science and Machine Learning techniques.

External Relations Committee

Italian Chapter of the Complex Systems Society (CSS/Italy)

Member of the External Relations Committee, coordinating scientific collaborations and participation to Italian, EU, and international projects.

Ph.D. Student

University of Catania, DIEEI

Graduated with a thesis on tackling NP-hard problems on graphs using Geometric Deep Learning, where I proposed a new layer to learn on signed and weighted networks, and a new meta-model to learn on multilayer networks.

Research Intern

Center for Complex Network Intelligence (CCNI), Tsinghua University

Remote internship at CCNI, Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence (THBI). Research on network dismantling approaches that leverage the geometry of the network.

Machine Learning Intern

Nokia Bell Labs, Data Analytics

Worked on master’s thesis and on paper submitted to IJCAI-19. “Fine-grained search space classification for hard subset problems”. Application of Machine Learning techniques to Network Science.

System Integration and Home Automation Intern

Systemia S.R.L.

Designed and developed Amazon Alexa Custom and Smart Home Skills for integration with Vantage Controls devices.

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Engineering

University of Catania

Thesis focused on tackling NP-hard graph problems through Geometric Deep Learning.

M.Sc. in Computer Engineering

University of Catania

B.Sc. in Computer Engineering

University of Catania