For a Human-Centered AI

WebValley alumni: Filippo Quattrocchi

December 20, 2016

Below you will find the contribution of one of the participants of the 2014 Webvalley summer Internet camp. Filippo Quattrocchi currently studies mathematics in Pisa.

webvalley2014 “My name is Filippo Quattrocchi and I attended WebValley in the summer of 2014. What prompted me to apply for this initiative was above all my strong interest in computing in general, and in programming in particular, which I have nurtured since a young age. For this reason, my experience at WebValley was very exciting, informative and rewarding: I learned a lot and I could use my knowledge to develop a group project.

Throughout my high school years, I participated with great enthusiasm in math and computer Olympics, managing to get two silver medals in the former and one bronze, one silver and one gold in the latter.

In 2015, I became very interested in robotics and, with a team from my school, I participated in RoboCup Junior giving my contribution especially thanks to my programming skills. In Milan, where we held the national contest, my team came in first so, in the summer of that year, we flew to Hefei, China, to participate in the international competition. The hard work of our team before and during the contest allowed us to win a third world place in our category.

In 2016, I graduated from the science specialization high school with 100 by writing an essay on a computing topic that I find very interesting: the simplex algorithm. However, the summer of 2016 was not a holiday period. Even then I had to study hard. In late July, thanks to a scholarship from the Bank of Italy, I and three other athletes from the IT Olympics participated in a three-week internship at IBM, one of the largest companies in the computer industry, at their Hursley – UK headquarters. Here we developed a project and created a software product in a very similar way to what we did in WebValley, capitalizing once more on this very useful experience. Soon afterwards, I left for Kazan, Russia, where I played the international computer Olympics, to which I had been admitted as a result of the national gold medal and a series of selection contests throughout the 2015/2016 school year.logowvfbk-300

In September, I took the admission exam to Scuola Normale Superiore and toward the middle of that month I learned about the positive outcome of my examination. So now I study mathematics in Pisa, and it is going well, both as for the college atmosphere I found, and because, once again, I can do what I like most.

I am very happy with the steps I have taken in recent years, especially because I have had the chance to work a lot on activities that I find extremely stimulating and fun, as well as preparatory to the university and the job market. So I am very grateful to the promoters of initiatives like WebValley and the many Olympics for high school students, which constantly pushed me to do my best”.


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