About
Iacopo Colonnelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Turin, Italy. He is a member of the HiPEAC community, a member of the CINI HPC-KTT National Laboratory, serves on the Technical Committee of the Common Workflow Language (CWL), and is a founding coordinator of the CWL4HPC working group. He earned his Ph.D. in Modeling and Data Science with honors from the University of Turin, where his thesis on novel workflow models for heterogeneous distributed systems received the ITADATA 2023 Best PhD Thesis Award. He has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications in national and international journals and conferences, and has contributed to more than 10 funded research projects. He is currently the local Principal Investigator for the DARE European project (total budget: €240M). He is also the designer and maintainer of the StreamFlow workflow manager (120+ citations on Google Scholar as of May 2026, recognized as an emerging technology by the EC Innovation Radar initiative) and has developed several other frameworks and libraries for workflow management and high-performance computing. His research interests include workflow modeling and management in heterogeneous distributed architectures, high-performance computing and I/O, distributed confidential computing, and large-scale data science.
Honors and Awards #
2026
Global Young Scientists Summit
Selected as one of two nominees from the University of Turin to participate in the 2026 Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) in Singapore — a prestigious international forum that brings together leading scientists and young researchers to discuss innovation, technology, and solutions to global challenges.
2023
Bando Premialità TO-PEOPLE 2023
The University of Turin, in the context of the Three-Year Program 2021-2023 TO-PEOPLE, launched an initiative to recognize the skills and scientific productivity of young researchers at the early stage of their academic careers. I was among the winners of the 2023 edition.
2023
ITADATA 2023 Best PhD Thesis Award
The CINI Data Science Lab established a Distinguished Award for the Best PhD Thesis in all fields of Big Data and Data Science successfully defended at an Italian university in 2023. The theses have been evaluated by a committee of experts based on originality and potential impact on the Big Data and Data Science community. My PhD thesis, titled "Workflow models for heterogeneous distributed systems," has been selected as the best thesis among the 18 applications received.
2023
EC Innovation Radar exploring technology award
The Innovation Radar is an initiative of the European Commission to identify high-potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation projects. In the context of the DeepHealth European project, the StreamFlow framework has been recognized as an "exploring technology."
2022
FGCS Fall 2022 Editors' Choice
Twice a year, the editorial board of the journal Future Generation Computer Systems selects a set of papers for the Editors' Choice. Selected papers have recently been published in the FGCS journal and are capturing the attention of readers. My article titled "Distributed workflows with Jupyter" has been included in the Fall 2022 Editors' Choice list.
2019
HPC-Europa3 grant
The HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access programme was a competitive initiative for European research scientists that provided access to HPC infrastructure across Europe. The program offered free access to HPC centers through a single application and an international two-stage peer-review process. The HPC-Europa3 Scientific Users Selection Panel evaluated applications based on scientific merit. I have been awarded an HPC-Europa3 grant for a 13-week visit to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
2019
ACACES 2019 grant
I have been selected as a HiPEAC grant recipient for attending the 15th International Summer School on Advanced Computer Architecture and Compilation for High-performance Embedded Systems (ACACES 2019) in Fiuggi, Italy.
Research activity #
2024–present
Founder and coordinator of the CWL4HPC working group
The CWL4HPC working group aims to identify workflow patterns for modeling large-scale scientific applications and to implement the related Common Workflow Language (CWL) enhancement proposals. I am the leading proponent of the CWL Loop feature to model iterative workflow patterns, which has been accepted for inclusion in CWL v1.3.
2022–present
Member of the Workflow Run RO-Crate working group
Workflow Run RO-Crate is a working group for defining RO-Crate profiles for capturing the provenance of an execution of a computational workflow. Since 2022, I have been a member of the working group, and together we developed the first version of the Workflow Run RO-Crate (WRROC) profile collection, which led to a joint scientific publication on the PLOS One journal, titled "Recording provenance of workflow runs with RO-Crate."
2022–present
Member of the Common Workflow Language Technical Committee
The Common Workflow Language (CWL) is an open standard for describing how to run command-line tools and connect them to create workflows. As a member of the technical committee, I am initially responsible for approving new versions of the CWL standards before the proposal goes to the CWL Leadership Team.
2021–present
Member of the CINI HPC-KTT National Laboratory
The CINI HPC Key Technologies and Tools (HPC-KTT) National Laboratory focuses on programming and execution models and tools, system software, high-performance software engineering, energy consumption reduction, and cloud computing. As a member of the Laboratory, I participated in four European projects funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking: ACROSS (G.A. 955648, total budget: €8M), TEXTAROSSA (G.A. 956831, total budget: €6M), EUPEX (G.A. 101033975, total budget: €41M), and EUPILOT (G.A. 101034126, total budget: €30M).
2020
Visiting Researcher at the Predictable Parallel Computing Group
The Predictable Parallel Computing research group, led by Dr. Eduardo Quiñones Moreno, aims to converge the High-Performance Computing and critical real-time embedded systems domains. I participated in the group's activities under the HPC-Europa3 grant program for 13 weeks, developing methods and tools for high-performance data analysis within the DeepHealth European project (G.A. 825111, total budget: €14.8M).
2018–present
Member of the Alpha Parallel Computing Group
The Parallel Computing research group (alpha) at the University of Torino, led by Prof. Marco Aldinucci, investigates and develops programming models, languages, and tools in parallel and distributed programming, high-performance computing, and federated learning. As a member of the group, I published 40+ research articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences and participated in 10+ national and international funded research projects. As an Assistant Professor, I am coordinating research on distributed workflows, distributed confidential computing, and low-level support for high-performance I/O.
Work experience #
2023–present
Assistant Professor (RTD-A)
Recipient of a 5-year contract as Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department.
2022–2023
Postdoctoral researcher
Recipient of a research contract in the field of scientific workflow management systems, with a specific focus on distributed workflow modeling, in the context of the ACROSS European Project (G.A. 955648, total budget: €8M).
2021–2022
Research engineer
Recipient of a research scholarship in the field of scientific workflow management systems, with a specific focus on distributed workflow modeling.
2015–2018
Technical team leader
Implementation of a Java-based learning management system on top of Liferay, a modular open source framework mainly based on the OSGi standard.
Education #
2018–2022
PhD in Modeling and Data Science
2014–2017
Master's Degree in Computer Engineering
2011–2014
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering