AI Researcher · NLP · Knowledge Representation
Building systems that understand language the way humans do — at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and Knowledge Representation.
I'm Carmela De Felice, known as Melina - a researcher with a passion for making machines understand human language in all its complexity. My work sits at the crossroads of symbolic and neural approaches, blending knowledge graphs with large language models to build systems that are not only powerful, but interpretable.
Outside the lab, I lose myself in books - literary fiction, philosophy of mind, the kind of essay that makes you put it down and stare at the ceiling. I have a deep fascination with Japanese culture and thought: the aesthetics of wabi-sabi, the stillness of ma, the way Zen finds meaning in what is left unsaid. Video games are my other passion - not as escapism, but as a narrative medium I take seriously. I believe in open science and in building tools that are genuinely accessible - because knowledge, like language, should never be a closed system.
University of Catania
Thesis Title: “Aligning knowledge graphs for the factual evaluation of text.”
University of Catania
Thesis Title: “Rappresentazione elettronica dei testi nelle digital humanities: codifica XML-TEI, XSL stylesheets e trasformazione XSLT.”
Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) Summer School, Catania (Italy)
Seminar “Dai chatbot agli assistenti vocali: approcci e metodologie per lo sviluppo di sistemi di dialogo complessi”
Seminar “VISIT 3D. Sistemi di dialogo virtuali per beni culturali”
UNVERSITY OF CATANIA, DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE (DMI)
Conducted research and developed a provenance attestation framework for ontologies, ensuring traceability, transparency, and trustworthiness of knowledge assets. Conceived an ontology-based RAG architecture for enhanced semantic retrieval and explainable AI.
CNR-ISTC Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies | Deparment of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania
Realisation of a project aimed at assessing the factual quality of a text. Technologies used: Python, data science libraries, knowledge graphs, NLP techniques.
ZENO WEB · Catania
I work in back-end development using PHP and Laravel framework, with experience in e-commerce projects primarily based on Prestashop and occasionally on Shopify. I manage integrations between business management systems and e-commerce platforms.
FONDAZIONE VERGA · Catania
Design and implementation of a website in WP.
FOIS 2025 & JOWO XI · Catania
15th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems and the Joint Ontology Workshops Episode XI.
Ontology for Agents, Systems, and Integration of Services Community Group
Semantic Shields 3: The 3rd International Workshop on Modeling for Cybersecurity for the 16th edition of the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS)
Applied Ontology
Information, Section Artificial Intelligence, Special Issue Natural Language Processing and Applications: Challenges and Perspectives