USI Raiffeisen Best Teaching Award to Luca Massimiliano Visconti and Gabriele Bavota

During the ceremony for USI's 30th Dies Academicus, held on Saturday, 25 April 2026, at the West Campus Lugano, the USI Raiffeisen Best Teaching Award was presented to Gabriele Bavota and Luca Massimiliano Visconti "for the quality of their teaching".

The USI Raiffeisen Best Teaching Award is a distinction that celebrates excellence in education and carries a prize of CHF 10,000, shared between the winners. Promoted by the Quality Assurance Service and approved by the Rectorate, the award is based on a structured process integrating qualitative and quantitative evaluations, with active contributions from both faculty and students. Raiffeisen's sponsorship further enhances the prestige of this recognition.

Laudatio for Gabriele Bavota
Ardigò Susanna and Barbieri Giovanni
Student Representatives of Faculty of Informatics

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Professor Gabriele Bavota’s teaching is highly esteemed by students for its clarity, rigour, and the meticulous structure of his courses. His lectures make even the most complex subjects accessible, fostering the development of solid and lasting skills. For these reasons, it is with great pleasure that we confer the 2026 USI Raiffeisen Best Teaching Award upon Professor Gabriele Bavota for the quality of his teaching.

Laudatio for Luca Massimiliano Visconti
Paudel Chhetri Prabriti and Pescioli Nico
Student Representatives of the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society

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This award recognises the Professor for his extraordinary and consistent teaching excellence over time, his adoption of innovative approaches, and his lasting impact on his students. For these reasons, we confer the 2026 USI Raiffeisen Best Teaching Award of the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society upon Professor Luca Massimiliano Visconti for the quality of his teaching.

Gabriele Bavota graduated summa cum laude in Computer Science from the University of Salerno (Italy), where he also earned his PhD in 2013. From January 2013 to October 2014, he was a Research Fellow at the Department of Engineering of the University of Sannio. Between November 2014 and August 2016, he served as an Assistant Professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. He joined the USI Faculty of Informatics in September 2016 as an Assistant Professor and is currently a Full Professor. His research interests include software maintenance and evolution, software repository mining, and empirical software engineering. He has authored over 180 articles published in international journals and conference proceedings. In 2018, he was honoured with the ACM SIGSOFT Early Career Researcher Award for outstanding contributions to the field of software engineering as an early-career researcher. He is the Principal Investigator of the DEVINTA project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant, which focuses on applying Deep Learning to software engineering. He has received four ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards at the three leading software engineering conferences: ASE (2013 and 2017), ESEC-FSE (2015), and ICSE (2015). Furthermore, he has received six other awards for best papers or distinguished contributions at various other venues. He has served as Program Co-Chair for ICPC 2016, SCAM 2016, SANER 2017, and ICSME 2023, and continues to serve on the organising and programme committees of numerous international conferences.

Luca M. Visconti is a Full Professor of Marketing at IMCA (the Institute of Marketing and Corporate Communication), and at ESCP Europe, Paris. He also teaches at IFM (Institut Français de la Mode) and Sciences Po, Paris. Since 2020, he has served as the Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society. Before joining USI, he was a Full Professor at ESCP Europe (2011–2017) and a Lecturer in Marketing at Bocconi University (1999–2011), where he earned his PhD in Business Administration and Management. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado (2004–2005) and the École Supérieure des Affaires, Université de Lille 2 (2007–2008 and 2010). His research examines the relationships between consumption, markets, and culture (Consumer Culture Theory), with a particular focus on brand management, luxury, storytelling, market vulnerability, and wellbeing. His work has been published in various international journals (including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Management, and Marketing Theory), as well as in numerous book chapters and volumes.