Prof. Silvia Ceccacci is associate professor of Design and Methods for Industrial Engineering (s.s.d IIND-3/B) at the Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism Sciences of the University of Macerata.

She teaches the course "Interaction Design: enabling methods and technologies," of the Master's degree program in Pedagogical Sciences (LM-85). She is a member of the departmental research center TincTec - Teaching and learning Inclusion, disability, and educational Technology. She is member of the Boards of Professors, and member of AQ groups, of the Doctoral Course in “Education, Cultural Heritage and Territories” (cycles XXXVIII and XXXIX), of the Doctoral Course in “Inclusive Education for Cultural Heritage and Tourism” (cycles XL) and of Doctoral Course of National Interest in “Teaching and Learning Sciences” (cycles XXXIX and XL).

From 2010 to May 2022, she was a member of the "DT&M" (Design Tools & Methods) research group within the Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (DIISM) of the Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM), where she served first as a collaborator, then as a PhD student, and later as a research fellow. In 2016, she received her PhD in Engineering Sciences, Mechanical and Management Engineering curriculum, with a thesis entitled "Study and development of methodologies and advanced solutions to support design of smart and inclusive environments."

Over the years, she has been involved in numerous projects funded by European, national and regional agencies and commissioned by companies.

She has authored over 70 scientific publications in international journals and conference proceedings indexed in Scopus and the ISI Web of Knowledge. According to the Scopus citation reports, she has an H-index of 13 and more than 680 citations.

The research activity carried out over the years covers some of the main topics of the scientific disciplinary field of Design and Methods for Industrial Engineering (IIND-3/B). The main research topics, all inscribed in the field of methodologies and tools to support design, can be summarized as follows:

• Methods and tools for human-centered and inclusive design of intelligent and adaptive HMI. The research activity has been directed along the following main lines:
  1. The definition of methods to support the design of inclusive user interfaces, for the management of ambient intelligence systems, capable of learning users' behavior and adapting information they provide, and their interaction modality, to users' accessibility requirements (visual, cognitive, motor abilities), context, and user behavior during interaction (Ceccacci et al., 2016; Gullà et al., 2015; Gullà et al., 2016; Gullà et al., 2017).
  2. The development and application of new affective computing tools aimed at equipping interactive systems with emotional intelligence in order to better support people, who interact with them, in achieving their goals. In particular, the possibility of employing tools based on deep learning algorithms, capable of predicting the emotions manifested by the user based on the analysis of facial expressions, detected through video/webcams, was evaluated in order to develop home environments capable of responding to different mood states of the user, adapting environmental parameters (e.g, lighting, background music), so as to maximize the level of comfort (Altieri et al., 2019; Generosi et al., 2019), or to regulate the user's emotions in order to maximize safety in the automotive environment (Ceccacci et al., 2020; Ceccacci et al., 2021). In addition, solutions have been studied to adapt the services offered in retail based on customer behavior so as to maximize the customer experience (Generosi et al., 2018; Generosi et al., 2019; Mengoni et al., 2018; Ceccacci et al., 2022).
  3. Technologies for the Cultural Heritage sector. In this area, research activity has been conducted on the one hand with the aim of evaluating the applicability of various XR technologies, such as VR/AR/MR technologies (Leopardi et al., 2020) and haptic technologies (Ceccacci et al., 2021) to improve the visitor experience in the enjoyment of virtual exhibitions. On the other hand, innovative solutions based on Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) technologies were developed to support the understanding of artworks characterized by high symbolic content (Leopardi et al. 2019 and 2020). Finally, a system based on affective computing technologies has been devised for the definition of personalized visit paths based on the emotional state of visitors (Altieri et al., 2021).
  4. Technologies for inclusive education. A research activity was initiated to identify possible technologies to enable the authentication of students and the monitoring of their level of attention and satisfaction, in an e-learning context, in a non-invasive way. Specifically, a web-based platform, described in Ceccacci et al. (2021), was developed for the management of MOOCs-based e-learning courses, which exploits facial coding techniques (face recognition, emotion recognition, gaze tracking) to enable continuous student authentication and automatic monitoring of student behavior, while attending class, from the analysis of video images captured by the webcam of the devices used by students to attend class (e.g., PCs, tablets, smartphones). In addition, a new strand of research has been initiated that aims to evaluate whether emotional feedback analysis tools can detect the activation of inclusive processes, depending on different profiles of student functioning, discipline, to teacher attitude and style (Mengoni et al., 2021a; Mengoni et al., 2021b; Giaconi et al., 2022; Generosi et al., 2022).
• Methods and tools for Human-Centered Manufacturing. One of the main goals of Industry 4.0 is to find solutions to put workers in more sustainable and inclusive working conditions, improving factory efficiency and productivity. Given future challenges due to ongoing demographic changes, it can be expected that industries will increasingly need to consider human variability and predict worker behaviors, moving beyond the concept of "worker" as a homogeneous group and monitoring specific work-related risks more accurately, to implement more effective health and safety management systems to increase factory efficiency and safety. In order to reduce ergonomic risks and promote worker well-being by making the most of the specificities and abilities of each worker, new, low-cost tools are needed that can accurately monitor work postures and assess work-related ergonomic risk in a timely and continuous manner. In addition, new systems are needed to make workers aware of ergonomic risks and to encourage good practices to prevent them. In this context, a pragmatic approach has been developed to support the application of ergonomic risk management in practice (Ceccacci et al., 2019). In addition, a new system was developed to support the ergonomist, which can semi-automatically assess ergonomic risk based on the main ergonomic indices (i.e., RULA, REBA, OWAS, OCRA), from the analysis of videos recorded using a common RGB camera (Agostinelli et al., 2021; Generosi et al., 2022).

She has participated as a speaker, presenting research results, at numerous international conferences.

Since 2020, she is member of the Program Board of the International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction (UAHCI), an affiliated conference of the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. She annually organizes and chairs parallel sessions.

She serves as a reviewer for several international journals, including: International Journal of Human-Cumputer Interaction (Taylor & Francis), Frontiers in Computer Science, Human-Media Interaction section (Frontiers Media S.A.), Frontiers in Psychology, Human-Media Interaction section (Frontiers Media S.A. ), Sensors (MDPI), Information (MDPI), IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine (IEEE), Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (MDPI), Multimedia Tools and Applications (Springer), Procedia Manufacturing (Elsevier), Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal (ASTES Publishers), Applied Sciences (MDPI).

Currently, she is guest editor for Special Issue "Accessibility and Inclusion in Education: Enabling Digital Technologies" of the journal Information.