LICIA SBATTELLA – Master Degree in Bioengineering, Master Degree in Clinical Psychology, PhD in Computer Science and Specialization as Cognitive Psychotherapist - is Associate Professor of “Natural Language Processing” and of “Personality Team Building and Leadership” at the Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria of Politecnico di Milano. Since 1985 she has been involved in national and international research activities at Politecnico di Milano, at the Department of Computer Science University of Toronto (Canada), at the Faculty of Communication of Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland), at the Art Faculty of Charles De Gaulle University (Lille, France), at UNESCO (France) dealing with computational linguistics, interaction analysis and conversational agents for psychology and psychotherapy, cognitive science, inclusive education and assistive technology, multimedia accessible arts, music psychology.
From 2003 to 2019 she has been the Delegate of the Rector of Politecnico di Milano for persons with disability, Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD / DSA). As a delegate, in 2003 she founded and since then coordinated the MultiChancePoliTeam, the group of specialists who uses innovative technologies and supports cooperative networks: - to assure the complete accessibility of courses and initiatives which involves students with disabilities, either congenital or acquired, and DSA, - to support the employment of students with disability who obtained their degree.
Since 2020 she is the Delegate of the Rector of Politecnico di Milano for Psychological Diseases. In 2017 she founded PoliPsi the service that offers psychotherapeutic pathways and experiential psychological courses to students and PhD who need them.
Since 2007 she is member of the Steering Committee of UN-G3ict (the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs: a Flagship Advocacy Initiative of the United Nations Global Alliance, ICT and Development) and works internationally with projects for the dissemination and implementation around the world of the principles outlined by the Declaration on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted by the UN in 2007. Since 2015 she represents Politecnico di Milano at the International Association of Universities (IAU). In 2017 she has been invited by the Holy Father to be Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
She is Ordinary Member of SITCC (Società Italiana di Terapia Cognitiva e Comportmentale), professor and lecturer of highly specialized courses in private and public organizations as the Psychotherapy School “Centro di Terapia Cognitiva” in Como. From 2010 to 2013 she has been Visiting Professor of "Psychology of Music” and “Multimedia Accessible Arts” for the Master on Art et Existence at the Charles De Gaulle University in Lille (France). In Milano she is teaching in Italian and in English and in Lille she has been teaching in French.
She published 11 books and more than 130 articles in international journals and conference proceedings. She is author of the books: - La mente orchestra. Elaborazione della risonanza e autismo, Vita e Pensiero, 2006, - Ti penso dunque suono. Costrutti cognitivi e relazionali del comportamento musicale, Vita e Pensiero, 2013; co-editor of the book Le Jeu D’Orchestre. Recherche-action en art dans les lieux de privation de libertée, Septentrion, 2013; co-author of the books The Art and Science of Computing, Addison Wesley, 1997; Informatica: arte e mestiere, Mc Graw Hill, 20144, 20083, 20042, 19991; Istituzioni di Informatica, Mc Graw Hill, 19953, 19942, 19931.
She is currently involved in international and national projects relied to the analysis of verbal and nonverbal interaction, speech and text analysis, empathetic conversational agents for clinics and education, affective computing, multichannel and multimodal communication, multimedia accessible arts (with IAU, EU, and MIUR).
She is currently President of Fondazione Sequeri Esagramma Onlus. Since 1983 she is Scientific Director of Esagramma (a clinic and research center in Milano), where she works with children and adults with autism, cognitive, mental and relational disorders and with their families (using original and innovative methodologies based on music, multimedia technologies and psychotherapy). She is founder and conductor of the Esagramma Symphonic Orchestra, the group which involves persons with special needs and professional musicians and which played in many European countries, in more than 150 theatres, churches, festivals and locations as the Vatican Giubilee in 2000, the European Parliament in Brussels in 2003, the Georgetown University in Washington DC in 2017. She created and validated the Esagramma® Methodologies of Inclusive Orchestral Education, Inclusive Vocal Drama, Orchestral Music Therapy, and Orchestral Team Building.