Rita Cucchiara (born 13 March 1965 in Modena, Italy) is an Italian electrical and computer engineer, academic, and researcher in the fields of computer vision and artificial intelligence, associated with the University of Bologna and the University of Ferrara.^[1] She is a Full Professor of Computer Engineering and Computer Vision in the Enzo Ferrari Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE).^[1,2] She has been appointed Rector of UNIMORE starting from 1 November 2025, succeeding Carlo Adolfo Porro.

At UNIMORE, she has directed the ImageLab (AImageLab) laboratory and the AIRI (Artificial Intelligence Research and Innovation) Interdepartmental Research Center.^[2] She was also the director of the Interdepartmental Center for Research in ICT from 2012 to 2018, director of the Italian National Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems from 2018 to 2021, and president of the Italian Association for Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition from 2016 to 2018.

Cucchiara is a leader in a leading company in the field of artificial intelligence and applies deep network techniques to understand human behavior. Working in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition since the 1990s, her recent collaborations with Panasonic, RAI, and Ferrari focus on GPU-based deep learning in video understanding for human behavior analysis and automotive video understanding. In 2020, she received the Cigliegia d'Oro prize for her work on artificial intelligence.^[13]

Rita Cucchiara was born in Modena, Italy, on 13 March 1965. She attended the classical lyceum of Modena and graduated with honors in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bologna in 1989.^[10,11] She earned her doctorate from the University of Bologna, reported as a Ph.D. in Electronic and Computer Engineering in 1993 according to English Wikipedia, or a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science in 1992 according to French Wikipedia.^[10,11] During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting researcher at University College London.^[3]

Her research is particularly focused on computer vision for understanding human behavior, and she works as the director of the Almage lab at UNIMORE in Modena. From 2018 to 2021, she was also the director of the Italian National Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems of CINI, which she founded.^[12] In 2018, she was selected by RoboHub, a research, innovation, and development center specializing in artificial intelligence and robotics, among the 25 most influential women in robotics for her research conducted on artificial intelligence applied to robotics. In 2020, she received the Cigliegia d'Oro prize, which honors individuals distinguished in cultural, social, sporting, or humanistic fields for their academic, scientific, and cultural involvement, for her work on artificial intelligence.^[13]

Cucchiara began her academic career as a researcher at the University of Ferrara (1993–1998). She later joined the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where she became Associate Professor and, since 2005, Full Professor of Computer Engineering. At UNIMORE, she led the AImageLab and coordinated the AI Research and Innovation Center (AIRI). She has supervised numerous Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers, and teaches courses of "Computer Architecture" and "Computer Vision and Cognitive Systems".

Rita Cucchiara's research focuses on artificial intelligence and robotics, with a particular emphasis on pattern recognition, computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, multimodal vision-language models, and visual language generation. Her most recent work centers on multimodal generative artificial intelligence, deep learning of image and text, information retrieval, and applications of AI for cultural heritage and infrastructure safety.^[14] She has also conducted research in visual data and video analysis for human behavioral analysis and understanding, as well as on surveillance and biometrics.

In 2020, during the Covid-19 crisis, Cucchiara used her artificial intelligence research to develop a real-time surveillance system to calculate and verify potential risk situations in public spaces through geographical verifications of interpersonal space between individuals.^[15] She has coordinated, headed, or contributed to numerous European and national research projects, including BESAFE (2007), the European THIS project (2009), PRIN PREVUE (2019), HUMAN-E-AI, ELSA, ELIAS, ELLiOT, FIT4MedRob, and EcoSistER (PNRR). According to Google Scholar (2025), she is the author of over 600 scientific papers, with more than 33,000 citations and an h-index of 77.^[4]

At the national level, Cucchiara has been a key figure in shaping Italy's AI policy, serving as a member of the Steering Committee for the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2024-2026 at the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers and as a member of the Parliamentary Working Group on AI (2023-2024). She has also acted as an expert for the National Research Program (PNR) 2021-2027 and as an advisor to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for Italy-Canada programs. In addition, she has served on the Board of Directors of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) since 2017, the FAIR – Future AI Research Foundation (PNRR), and as a board member of ART-ER Emilia-Romagna.

At the international level, she serves on the Board of Directors of ELLIS and ECVA (European Computer Vision Association). She also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen) and the Computer Vision Center (Barcelona), along with the Advisory Committees of the Computer Vision Foundation and the IEEE PAMI Technical Committee.

On 27 June 2025, Cucchiara was elected Rector of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, defeating Tommaso Fabbri in the second round.^[6] She officially assumed office on 1 November 2025, succeeding Carlo Adolfo Porro.

She has been a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) since 2006 and was awarded the IAPR Maria Petrou Prize in 2018. In 2019, she received the UNICEF Italy Golden Spider Award for scientific research and was named an ELLIS Fellow. She received the Ciliegia d’Oro Prize from the Vignola Foundation and became a member of the Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences of Modena in 2022. She was elected a member of the Italian National Academy of Engineering and Technology (ItaTec) in 2024 and was included among the world's top 2% most cited scientists according to Stanford University in 2025.