Welcome Professor Alessio Del Bue to Durham — Strengthening Our Collaboration

02 Oct 2025 . category: research . Comments

Alessio Del Bue, IIT

We are delighted to welcome Professor Alessio Del Bue to Durham University in his newly conferred role as Honorary Professor in the Department of Computer Science. His appointment marks an exciting new chapter in our long-standing and evolving collaboration.

Professor Del Bue, a Senior Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, brings to Durham a wealth of expertise in computer vision, artificial intelligence, and multimodal data analysis.

He leads the PAVIS (Pattern Analysis & Computer Vision) research line at IIT, spearheading research in 3D reconstruction, AI-driven interpretation of visual data, and human-centred vision systems.

This new honorary position at Durham is not only a recognition of his scientific stature but also a signal of our commitment to deepen cross-institutional cooperation. It is, in fact, the first Honorary Professorship in the Durham Computer Science Department, making it a landmark appointment. Durham University

What This Means for Our Collaboration

  • Joint Research & Projects: We look forward to co-leading proposals, projects, and workshops that connect Durham and Genoa, and more broadly engage with European AI/computer vision initiatives.
  • Student & Researcher Exchange: With Professor Del Bue formally linked to Durham, there is new potential for exchange visits, co-supervised PhDs, and joint supervision.
  • Interdisciplinary Synergies: His work intersects strongly with visual reasoning, spatial layout understanding, and multimodal AI — areas that resonate with our group’s research on scene reasoning, iconographic signals, and visual query systems.
  • Elevating International Profile: Having such a distinguished collaborator formally associated with Durham strengthens our international visibility, particularly in AI, computer vision, and related domains.

In a statement about his appointment, Professor Del Bue said:

“I am honoured to join Durham University as an Honorary Professor and look forward to developing collaborations across the Department and wider University to advance the boundaries of AI and Computer Vision.” Durham University

We echo that sentiment wholeheartedly: we are thrilled at the prospect of deeper collaboration, cross-pollination of ideas, and joint breakthroughs ahead.

Please join us in welcoming Professor Del Bue to Durham. Watch this space for upcoming joint announcements, events, and collaborative initiatives.

Stuart James

Assistant Professor in Visual Computing at Durham University. Stuart's research focus is on Visual Reasoning to understand the layout of visual content from Iconography (e.g. Sketches) to 3D Scene understanding and their implications on methods of interaction. He is currently a co-I on the RePAIR EU FET, DCitizens EU Twinning, and BoSS EU Lighthouse. He was a co-I on the MEMEX RIA EU H2020 project coordinated at IIT for increasing social inclusion with Cultural Heritage. Stuart has previously held a Researcher & PostDoc positions at IIT as well as PostDocs at University College London (UCL), and the University of Surrey. Also, at the University of Surrey, Stuart was awarded his PhD on visual information retrieval for sketches. Stuart holds an External Scientist at IIT, Honorary roles UCL and UCL Digital Humanities, and an international collaborator of ITI/LARSyS. He also regularly organises Vision for Art (VISART) workshop and Humanities-orientated tutorials and was Program Chair at British Machine Conference (BMVC) 2021.