Paolo Rota

Associate Professor

paolo.rota@unitn.it

About

I am Paolo Rota, a researcher and assistant 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.

Recently, I have been exploring topics such as zero-shot action recognition, temporal action localization, and vocabulary-free image classification, contributing to publications at conferences like CVPR, NeurIPS, and ICCV. I enjoy tackling challenges in open-world recognition and multimodal learning, always looking for ways to improve AI’s practical impact.

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.

Research Interests

Vision and Language

Supervisees

Shiyao Xu

Ph.D.

Papers (25)

2026

Yan Shu, Bin Ren, Zhitong Xiong, Xiao Xiang Zhu, Begüm Demir, Nicu Sebe, Paolo Rota

Shiyao Xu, Benedetta Liberatori, Gül Varol, Paolo Rota

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2025

ConViS-Bench: Estimating Video Similarity Through Semantic Concepts

Benedetta Liberatori, Alessandro Conti, Lorenzo Vaquero, Yiming Wang, Elisa Ricci, Paolo Rota

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ImageNet-trained CNNs are not biased towards texture: Revisiting feature reliance through controlled suppression

Oral

Tom Burgert, Oliver Stoll, Paolo Rota, Begüm Demir

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On Large Multimodal Models as Open-World Image Classifiers

Alessandro Conti, Massimiliano Mancini, Enrico Fini, Yiming Wang, Paolo Rota, Elisa Ricci

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Automatic benchmarking of large multimodal models via iterative experiment programming

Alessandro Conti, Enrico Fini, Paolo Rota, Yiming Wang, Massimiliano Mancini, Elisa Ricci

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Multi-focal Conditioned Latent Diffusion for Person Image Synthesis

Jiaqi Liu, Jichao Zhang, Paolo Rota, Nicu Sebe

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2024

Test-Time Zero-Shot Temporal Action Localization

Benedetta Liberatori, Alessandro Conti, Paolo Rota, Yiming Wang, Elisa Ricci

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Text-Enhanced Zero-Shot Action Recognition: A training-free approach

Massimo Bosetti, Shibingfeng Zhang, Giacomo Zara, Elisa Ricci, Paolo Rota

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2023

AutoLabel: CLIP-based framework for Open-set Video Domain Adaptation

Giacomo Zara, Subhankar Roy, Paolo Rota, Elisa Ricci

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The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Large Language-Vision Models for Source-free Video Domain Adaptation

Giacomo Zara^*, Alessandro Conti^*, Subhankar Roy, Stéphane Lathuilière, Paolo Rota, Elisa Ricci

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Alessandro Conti, Enrico Fini, Massimiliano Mancini, Paolo Rota, Yiming Wang, Elisa Ricci

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2022

Alessandro Conti, Paolo Rota, Yiming Wang, Elisa Ricci

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Jurandy Almeida, Cristiano Saltori, Paolo Rota, Nicu Sebe

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Victor G. Turrisi da Costa, Giacomo Zara, Paolo Rota, Thiago Oliveira-Santos, Nicu Sebe, Vittorio Murino, Elisa Ricci

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Guanglei Yang, Paolo Rota, Xavier Alameda-Pineda, Dan Xu, Mingli Ding, Elisa Ricci

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Guanglei Yang, Enrico Fini, Dan Xu, Paolo Rota, Mingli Ding, Hao Tang, Xavier Alameda-Pineda, Elisa Ricci

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Petru Soviany, Radu Tudor Ionescu, Paolo Rota, Nicu Sebe

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Guanglei Yang, Enrico Fini, Dan Xu, Paolo Rota, Mingli Ding, Moin Nabi, Xavier Alameda-Pineda, Elisa Ricci

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Victor G. Turrisi da Costa, Giacomo Zara, Paolo Rota, Thiago Oliveira-Santos, Nicu Sebe, Vittorio Murino, Elisa Ricci

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2021

Curriculum self-paced learning for cross-domain object detection

Petru Soviany, Radu Ionescu, Paolo Rota, Nicu Sebe

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2020

Class-Aware Modality Mix and Center-Guided Metric Learning for Visible-Thermal Person Re-Identification

Yongguo Ling, Zhun Zhong, Zhiming Luo, Paolo Rota, Shaozi Li, Nicu Sebe

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Deep learning for classification and localization of COVID-19 markers in point-of-care lung ultrasound

Subhankar Roy, Willi Menapace, Sebastiaan Oei, Ben Luijten, Enrico Fini, Cristiano Saltori, Iris Huijben, Nishith Chennakeshava, Federico Mento, Alessandro Sentelli, Emanuele Peschiera, Riccardo Trevisan, Giovanni Maschietto, Elena Torri, Riccardo Inchingolo, Andrea Smargiassi, Gino Soldati, Paolo Rota, Andrea Passerini, Ruud J G van Sloun, Elisa Ricci, Libertario Demi

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Low-Budget Unsupervised Label Query through Domain Alignment Enforcement

Jurandy Almeida, Cristiano Saltori, Paolo Rota, Nicu Sebe

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2019

Cut Quality Estimation in Industrial Laser Cutting Machines: A Machine Learning Approach

Giorgio Santolini, Paolo Rota, Davide Gandolfi, Paolo Bosetti

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