Danilo Croce

Associate Professor at University of Rome Tor Vergata. Research in NLP, Large Language Models, Multimodality, Human-Robot Interaction.

Scientific Awards

This page lists research awards, system recognitions, and benchmark achievements.

  • Best Paper Award, 14th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (SEM 2025) –
    Injecting Frame Semantics into Large Language Models via Prompt-Based Fine-Tuning
    (Rai et al., 2025)

  • Top System Award, BioASQ 2025 – UniTor: Modular Biomedical Question Answering System
    (1st place in Factoid and Ideal Answer tasks) (Borazio et al., 2025).

  • Outstanding Paper Award, Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact (NLP4PI @ ACL 2025) – Unsupervised Sustainability Report Labeling based on the integration of the GRI and SDG standards (Mousavian Anaraki et al., 2025)

  • Best System Award, EVALITA 2023 – ExtremITA: An instruction-tuned LLM for Italian (Hromei et al., 2023)

  • Best Paper Award, International Conference on Deep Learning Theory and Applications (DeLTA 2023) – Automatic Stance Detection with Italian Large Language Models (Margiotta et al., 2023)

  • Best Paper Award, Workshop on Natural Language for Artificial Intelligence (NL4AI 2022) – LLMs and Ethics by Design (Hromei et al., 2022)

  • Best Paper Award, EVALITA 2020 – Stance Detection in Italian Tweets (Giorgioni et al., 2020)

  • Best Paper Award, AIxIA 2019 – Deep Learning in Semantic Kernel Spaces (Croce et al., 2019)

  • Best Paper Award, CLiC-it 2018 – Neural Models for Italian NLP (Croce et al., 2018)

  • Distinguished Young Paper, CLiC-it 2016 – Context-aware Sentiment Analysis (Vanzo et al., 2016)

  • IBM Best Paper Award, COLING 2014 – A context-based model for Sentiment Analysis in Twitter (Vanzo et al., 2014)

  • Distinguished Young Paper, CLiC-it 2014 – Contextual polarity in Italian tweets (Vanzo et al., 2014)

  • Best System Paper, RoboCup Symposium 2014 – LU4R: Spoken Language Understanding for Robots (Bastianelli et al., 2015)
  • Best Paper Award, CICLING 2009 – Structured Learning for Semantic Processing (Basili et al., 2009)

Systems Evaluated in International Campaigns

References

  1. Rai, S. I., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2025). Injecting Frame Semantics into Large Language Models via Prompt-Based Fine-Tuning. In L. Frermann & M. Stevenson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (*SEM 2025) (pp. 31–47). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.starsem-1.3
  2. Borazio, F., Shcherbakov, A., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2025). UniTor at BioASQ 2025: Modular Biomedical QA with Synthetic Snippets and Multiple Task Answer Generation. In G. Faggioli, N. Ferro, A. Hanbury, & E. Kanoulas (Eds.), Working Notes of CLEF 2025 - Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (Vol. 4038, pp. 165–177). CEUR Workshop Proceedings. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4038/paper_10.pdf
  3. Mousavian Anaraki, S. A., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2025). Unsupervised Sustainability Report Labeling based on the integration of the GRI and SDG standards. In K. Atwell, L. Biester, A. Borah, D. Dementieva, O. Ignat, N. Kotonya, Z. Liu, R. Wan, S. Wilson, & J. Zhao (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact (NLP4PI) (pp. 151–162). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.nlp4pi-1.13
  4. Hromei, C. D., Croce, D., Basile, V., & Basili, R. (2023). ExtremITA at EVALITA 2023: Multi-Task Sustainable Scaling to Large Language Models at its Extreme. In M. Lai, S. Menini, M. Polignano, V. Russo, R. Sprugnoli, & G. Venturi (Eds.), Proceedings of the Eighth Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2023), Parma, Italy, September 7th-8th, 2023 (Vol. 3473). CEUR-WS.org. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3473/paper13.pdf
  5. Margiotta, D., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2023). TaxoSBERT: Unsupervised Taxonomy Expansion Through Expressive Semantic Similarity. In D. Conte, A. Fred, O. Gusikhin, & C. Sansone (Eds.), Deep Learning Theory and Applications - 4th International Conference, DeLTA 2023, Rome, Italy, July 13-14, 2023, Proceedings (Vol. 1875, pp. 295–307). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39059-3_20
  6. Hromei, C. D., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2022). Grounding end-to-end Architectures for Semantic Role Labeling in Human Robot Interaction. In D. Nozza, L. C. Passaro, & M. Polignano (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Natural Language for Artificial Intelligence (NL4AI 2022) co-located with 21th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2022), Udine, November 30th, 2022 (Vol. 3287, pp. 24–38). CEUR-WS.org. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3287/paper5.pdf
  7. Giorgioni, S., Politi, M., Salman, S., Basili, R., & Croce, D. (2020). UNITOR @ Sardistance2020: Combining Transformer-based Architectures and Transfer Learning for Robust Stance Detection. In V. Basile, D. Croce, M. D. Maro, & L. C. Passaro (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2020), Online event, December 17th, 2020 (Vol. 2765). CEUR-WS.org. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2765/paper99.pdf
  8. Croce, D., Castellucci, G., & Basili, R. (2019). Kernel-Based Generative Adversarial Networks for Weakly Supervised Learning. AI*IA 2019 - Advances in Artificial Intelligence - XVIIIth International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, Rende, Italy, November 19-22, 2019, Proceedings, 336–347. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35166-3_24
  9. Croce, D., Rossini, D., & Basili, R. (2018). On the Readability of Deep Learning Models: the role of Kernel-based Deep Architectures. Proceedings of the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-It 2018), Torino, Italy, December 10-12, 2018. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2253/paper71.pdf
  10. Vanzo, A., Croce, D., Basili, R., & Nardi, D. (2016). Context-aware Spoken Language Understanding for Human Robot Interaction. Proceedings of Third Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-It 2016) & Fifth Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2016), Napoli, Italy, December 5-7, 2016. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1749/paper55.pdf
  11. Vanzo, A., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2014). A context-based model for sentiment analysis in twitter. Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2014), 2345–2354. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84937448823&partnerID=40&md5=b33cc0dd427f7741229594971cdc1270
  12. Vanzo, A., Castellucci, G., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2014). A context based model for Sentiment Analysis in Twitter for the Italian Language. First Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics.
  13. Bastianelli, E., Iocchi, L., Nardi, D., Castellucci, G., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2015). RoboCup@Home spoken corpus: Using robotic competitions for gathering datasets. In Proceedings of the Robot Soccer World Cup (RoboCup 2015), 8992, 19–30. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18615-3_2
  14. Basili, R., Cao, D. D., Croce, D., Coppola, B., & Moschitti, A. (2009). Cross-Language frame semantics transfer in bilingual corpora. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 5449 LNCS, 332–345. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00382-0_27
  15. Breazzano, C., Rubino, E., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2020). UNITOR @ DANKMEME: Combining Convolutional Models and Transformer-based architectures for accurate MEME management. In V. Basile, D. Croce, M. D. Maro, & L. C. Passaro (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2020), Online event, December 17th, 2020 (Vol. 2765). CEUR-WS.org. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2765/paper139.pdf
  16. Santilli, A., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2018). A Kernel-based Approach for Irony and Sarcasm Detection in Italian. Proceedings of the Sixth Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2018) Co-Located with the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-It 2018), Turin, Italy, December 12-13, 2018. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2263/paper023.pdf
  17. Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2018). A Markovian Kernel-based Approach for itaLIan Speech acT labEliNg. Proceedings of the Sixth Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2018) Co-Located with the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-It 2018), Turin, Italy, December 12-13, 2018. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2263/paper029.pdf
  18. Filice, S., Croce, D., Moschitti, A., & Basili, R. (2016). KeLP at SemEval-2016 task 3: Learning semantic relations between questions and answers. SemEval 2016 - 10th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation, Proceedings, 1116–1123. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85029360826&partnerID=40&md5=bd14a51a5e633c8023684a634c6b2aab
  19. Castellucci, G., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2016). Context-aware Convolutional Neural Networks for Twitter Sentiment Analysis in Italian. Proceedings of Third Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-It 2016) & Fifth Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA 2016), Napoli, Italy, December 5-7, 2016. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1749/paper_029.pdf
  20. Castellucci, G., Croce, D., De Cao, D., & Basili, R. (2014). A Multiple Kernel Approach for Twitter Sentiment Analysis in Italian. Evalita 2014.
  21. Bastianelli, E., Croce, D., Nardi, D., & Basili, R. (2013). UNITOR-HMM-TK: Structured kernel-based learning for spatial role labeling. Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval 2013), 2, 573–579. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85040546154&partnerID=40&md5=1bf530a00b947d640a3390c455c0dbd0
  22. Castellucci, G., Filice, S., Croce, D., & Basili, R. (2013). UNITOR: Combining syntactic and semantic kernels for twitter sentiment analysis. Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval 2013), 2, 369–374. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84926013794&partnerID=40&md5=2d8de3699237c919f65ac45d919f6146
  23. Croce, D., Storch, V., & Basili, R. (2013). UNITOR-CORE TYPED: Combining Text Similarity and Semantic Filters through SV Regression. Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval 2013), 1, 59–65. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84973882381&partnerID=40&md5=a8e5b2c48376f095db804d2477d3b3b1
  24. Croce, D., Annesi, P., Storch, V., & Basili, R. (2012). UNITOR: Combining semantic text similarity functions through SV Regression. *SEM 2012: The First Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics – Volume 1: Proceedings of the Main Conference and the Shared Task, and Volume 2: Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval 2012), 2, 597–602. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85040635623&partnerID=40&md5=2cb2117c92edb57173bed98475cc1573
  25. Croce, D., Bastianelli, E., & Castellucci, G. (2011). Structured Kernel-Based Learning for the Frame Labeling over Italian Texts. Evaluation of Natural Language and Speech Tools for Italian, International Workshop, EVALITA 2011, Rome, Italy, January 24-25, 2012, Revised Selected Papers, 220–229. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35828-9_24