Background

• Ph.D., Computer Science, Duke University, (1987)
• M.A., Computer Science, Duke University, (1984)
• Laurea, Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, (1980) 

Research

Dr. Valtorta's research interests are in the areas of normative reasoning under uncertainty (especially Bayesian networks, chain graphs, influence diagrams, causal models, identifiability issues, and applications in multiagent systems), heuristics for problem solving, and computational complexity in artificial intelligence. As a faculty member, he conducted research funded by ARDA, SPAWAR, DARPA, IARPA, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (DOA), CISE (an Italian laboratory controlled by ENEL, the state electricity company), and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. He recently led the UofSC part of a multi-institution IARPA-funded project on the synergistic use of Wigmorean inference networks and Bayesian networks to support argumentation and collaborated with Dr. Linyuan Lu of the UofSC mathematics department in an ONR-funded project on the Markov properties of directed hypergraphs. His current research includes inventing new algorithms for learning chain graphs from data and domain knowledge and the application of counterfactual reasoning to personalized health care.