Paolo Rota

I am Paolo Rota, associate professor at the University of Trento, working in computer vision, machine learning, and multimodal AI. My research focuses on vision-language models and activity recognition, with applications in video analytics and industrial AI.

My research focuses on computer vision and machine learning, with a particular emphasis on video understanding and multimodal AI. I investigate methods that bridge vision and language, addressing challenges such as zero-shot action recognition, temporal action localization, and open-world recognition using large vision–language models. More broadly, I work on representation learning and domain adaptation to build systems capable of robust visual understanding in dynamic and real-world environments. I am also interested in evaluation protocols and benchmark design for video analytics, aiming to develop principled and reliable ways to assess multimodal AI systems.

Outside of academia, I co-founded Mountain Maps, a startup that uses AI to enhance outdoor navigation and help people explore mountain environments more safely and enjoyably.