CV

You can also download my full CV as a PDF: CV_AlexCecchetto.pdf.

Education

• PhD in Statistical Sciences, University of Padova, Department of Statistical Sciences, Padova, Italy
  Oct 2023 - present
  Thesis: “Latent structure modeling in spatial transcriptomics data”
  Advisors: Davide Risso, Francesco Denti.

• M.Sc. in Statistical Sciences, University of Padova, Department of Statistical Sciences, Padova, Italy
  Nov 2019 - Mar 2022
  Thesis: “Risk Factor and Survival Analysis for Patients with von Hippel-Lindau Disease”
  Advisor: Bruno Scarpa.
  Final grade: 110/110 cum laude.

• B.Sc. in Statistics for Technology and Sciences, University of Padova, Department of Statistical Sciences, Padova, Italy
  Oct 2016 - Nov 2019
  Thesis: “Validation of Gaussian mixture models for the analysis of whole sky gamma-ray intensity map”
  Advisor: Alessandra R. Brazzale.

Visiting Research Experience

• Visiting Research Scholar, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
  Sep 2025 - present
  Designed and implemented a computationally efficient SGD-based inference algorithm for RUVIII-NB, improving scalability in single-cell RNA-seq normalization. Supervised by Prof. Agus Salim.

Work Experience

• Consultant, Qintesi S.p.A., Milan, Italy
  Apr 2022 - Oct 2023
  • Built and maintained databases for major insurance companies and corporate clients.
  • Contributed to internal projects within the Analytics and Data Platform Unit, developing machine learning models to support data-driven decision-making.
  • Worked with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Python, SAP, SQL, and ABAP.
• Research Collaborator, Istituto Oncologico Veneto (IOV), Padova, Italy
  Mar 2022 - present
  • Ongoing collaboration with the research team that provided the data for my M.Sc. thesis.
  • Contributed to statistical analyses for projects on hereditary cancer syndromes and genetic diseases.
  • Worked on data cleaning, exploratory analysis, survival analysis, regression modeling, and risk stratification.

Publications and Manuscripts

• Alex Cecchetto and Davide Risso. “Latent structure modeling in spatial transcriptomics data: Comparing two matrix factorization approaches.” In Scientific Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society, pages 169-174. Springer, 2025.

• Cecchetto, A., Denti, F., & Risso, D. “Clustering Gene Expressions Based on Spatial Latent Traits.” In preparation.

• Cecchetto, A., Denti, F., & Risso, D. “Scalable Bayesian model-based clustering for single-cell RNA-seq via generalized matrix factorization.” In preparation.

• Cecchetto, A., & Salim, A. “RUV-SGD-NB: normalization of single cell RNA-seq data.” In preparation.

Teaching

• Teaching Assistant, Metodi statistici per big data, University of Padova, 18h, Italian
  Academic Year 2025/2026. B.Sc. in Statistics for Technology and Sciences.

• Teaching Assistant, Statistical Learning, mod A, University of Padova, 30h, English
  Academic Year 2024/2025. M.Sc. in Data Science.

• Teaching Assistant, Modelli statistici applicati, University of Padova, 10h, Italian
  Academic Year 2024/2025. B.Sc. in Statistics for Technology and Sciences.

Presentations

• Latent Structure Modeling in Spatial Transcriptomics Data. Poster, EuroBioC 2025, Barcelona, Spain, Sep 2025.
• Generalized Matrix Factorization: A Flexible Framework for Spatially-Resolved Omics Data. Poster, BioInference, Bardonecchia, Italy, May 2025.
• Generalized Matrix Factorization: A Flexible Framework for Spatially-Resolved Omics Data. Poster, Data Science for Health and Biology, Milan, Italy, Apr 2025.
• Generalized Matrix Factorization: A Flexible Framework for Spatially-Resolved Omics Data. Talk, Lab Meeting, Department of Biology, University of Padova, Jun 2025.
• High-Dimensional Omics Data: From Sequencing to Insight. Talk, Lab Meeting, Department of Biology, University of Padova, Oct 2024.

Awards and Grants

• Travel Support, European Bioconductor Conference 2025, Barcelona, Spain, 2025.
• Travel Support, BioInference conference 2025, Bardonecchia, Italy, 2025.
• Stat Data Camp Scholarship, University of Padova, Department of Statistical Sciences, Brixen, Italy, 2022.

Selected Courses, Schools, and Workshops

• Melbourne Integrative Genomics Symposium, University of Melbourne, Dec 2025.
• CSAMA, Bioconductor, Brixen, Italy, Jul 2025.
• Natural Language Processing: dai BoW ai Transformers, University of Padova, Apr 2025.
• Short Course on Graphical Models, University of Padova, Sep 2024.
• Specialist Course: Replicability crisis in science, University of Padova, Jul 2024.
• Kalman Filter and State Space Models, University of Padova, Jun 2024.
• Bayesian Data Analysis and Computation, University of Padova, May 2024.
• Stat Data Camp, University of Padova, Brixen, Italy, Jul 2022.

Skills

• Languages: R, Python, C++, Rcpp, SQL, LaTeX, SAS.
• ML and scientific computing: PyTorch, NumPyro, NumPy, SciPy, pandas, scikit-learn.
• Data platforms and databases: GCP, SAP, ABAP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, BigQuery.
• Tools: Git/GitHub, Linux/Unix, Bash, Docker.
• HPC: SLURM, GPU computing, distributed computing.
• Reproducibility: Conda, renv, Quarto.

Languages

• Italian: native speaker.
• English: fluent.