Francesco Greco
Francesco Greco
Research Fellow
IVU Laboratory
Dipartimento di Informatica
Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro
Via Orabona, 4 - 70125 Bari - Italy
email: francesco.greco@uniba.it

Francesco Greco

Research Interests

Curriculum

Francesco Greco is currently a Research Fellow and third-year Ph.D. student at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bari Aldo Moro under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Desolda. He is a member of the Interaction, Visualization, Usability & UX (IVU) Lab, where he conducts most of his research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usable Security.

In his Ph.D. project, he is currently exploring and developing human-centered eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) solutions for cyber-security. Side research activities also include works in the areas of End-User Development, Internet of Things, Usable Security, and Computer Vision.

From October 2023 to March 2024 he was a visiting postgraduate researcher in the CYS (Cybersecurity) research group at King’s College London, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Luca Viganò. He got a master’s degree in Computer Science with full marks and honors in July 2022 at the University of Bari. He got his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Digital Communication with full marks and honors in July 2020 at the University of Bari - Taranto.

Francesco Greco is member of ACM since March 2023, ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) since June 2024, and ACM SIGCHI Italy since October 2022.

Publications

This section contains a comprehensive list of Francesco Greco’s publications.

Journal Articles

  1. Francesco Greco, Giuseppe Desolda, Paolo Buono, and Antonio Piccinno. 2025. Enhancing Phishing Defenses: The Impact of Timing and Explanations in Warnings for Email Clients. Computer Standards & Interfaces 93, (2025), 103982. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2025.103982
  2. Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, and Luca Viganò. 2025. APOLLO: A GPT-based tool to detect phishing emails and generate explanations that warn users. Accepted for publication on the EICS track of the Proceedings of ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (2025). URL: arxiv.org/abs/2410.07997
  3. Marco Saltarella, Giuseppe Desolda, Andrea Esposito, Francesco Greco, and Rosa Lanzilotti. 2024. Bridging the gap between GPDR and software development: the MATERIALIST framework. Multimedia Tools and Applications (2024). DOI:10.1007/s11042-024-19923-0

Conference Articles

  1. Margherita Andrao, Federica Gini, Francesco Greco, Alessandro Cappelletti, Giuseppe Desolda, Barbara Treccani, and Massimo Zancanaro. 0AD. "React", "Command", or "Instruct"? Teachers Mental Models on End-User Development. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3706598.3713234
  2. Giuseppe Desolda, Andrea Esposito, Francesco Greco, Cesare Tucci, Paolo Buono, and Antonio Piccinno. 2025. ATHENA: A customizable LLM-based Code Completion Tool for Visual Studio Code. In Companion Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2025) (IUI ’25 Companion), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3708557.3716357
  3. Vita Santa Barletta, Federica Caruso, Tania Di Mascio, Francesco Greco, Tasmina Islam, Veronica Rossano, and Hannan Xiao. 2024. CyberSecurity Education for Industry and Academia (CSE4IA 2024). In Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI ’24), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3656650.3660536
  4. Grazia Ragone, Paolo Buono, Domenico Desiato, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, and Rosa Lanzillotti. 2024. Towards a human factors assessment questionnaire for cybersecurity incidents. In Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI ’24), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3656650.3656720
  5. Francesco Greco, Giuseppe Desolda, and Luca Viganò. 2024. Supporting the Design of Phishing Education, Training and Awareness interventions: an LLM-based approach. In 2nd International Workshop on CyberSecurity Education for Industry and Academia (CSE4IA), CEUR-WS, Arenzano, Genoa, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3700/paper8.pdf
  6. Francesco Greco, Paolo Buono, Domenico Desiato, Giuseppe Desolda, Rosa Lanzilotti, and Grazia Ragone. 2024. Unlocking the Potential of Simulated Phishing Campaigns: Measuring the Impact of Interaction among Different Human Factors. In DAMOCLES’24: First International Workshop on Detection And Mitigation Of Cyber attacks that exploit human vuLnerabilitiES, CEUR-WS, Arenzano, Genoa, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3713/paper_4.pdf
  7. Francesco Greco, Giuseppe Desolda, Andrea Esposito, and Alessandro Carelli. 2024. David versus Goliath: Can Machine Learning Detect LLM-Generated Text? A Case Study in the Detection of Phishing Emails. In Proc. of the 8th Italianc Conference on Cyber Security (ITASEC 2024), CEUR-WS, Salerno, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3731/paper41.pdf
  8. Margherita Andrao, Alessandro Cappelletti, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, Barbara Treccani, and Massimo Zancanaro. 2023. SMARTER Than Before: Empowering Teachers to Program a Modular IoT Educational Device. In Joint Proceedings of the Workshops, Work in Progress Demos and Doctoral Consortium at the IS-EUD 2023, CEUR-WS. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3408/short-s0-01.pdf
  9. Paolo Buono, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, and Antonio Piccinno. 2023. Let warnings interrupt the interaction and explain: designing and evaluating phishing email warnings. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3544549.3585802
  10. Giuseppe Desolda, Andrea Esposito, Francesco Greco, Rosa Lanzilotti, and Marco Saltarella. 2023. MATERIALIST: A Web Platform for Guiding Privacy Design Pattern Selection in Software Development. In Joint Proceedings of the Workshops, Work in Progress Demos and Doctoral Consortium at the IS-EUD 2023, CEUR-WS, Cagliari, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3408/short-s3-09.pdf
  11. Fabrizio Balducci, Bernardo Breve, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, and Vincenzo Deufemia. 2023. Task Automation Systems to Secure Smart Environments. In Joint Proceedings of the Workshops, Work in Progress Demos and Doctoral Consortium at the IS-EUD 2023, CEUR-WS, Cagliari, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3408/short-s4-04.pdf
  12. Francesco Greco, Giuseppe Desolda, and Andrea Esposito. 2023. A Human-Centered XAI System for Phishing Detection. In Workshop on Human-Centered Explainable AI (HCXAI), Hamburg, Germany. URL: www.researchgate.net/publication/370097158_A_Human-Centered_XAI_System_for_Phishing_Detection
  13. Francesco Greco, Giuseppe Desolda, and Andrea Esposito. 2023. Explaining Phishing Attacks: An XAI Approach to Enhance User Awareness and Trust. In Proc. of the Italian Conference on Cybersecurity (ITASEC ’23), CEUR-WS, Bari, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3488/paper22.pdf
  14. Margherita Andrao, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, Ren Manfredi, Barbara Treccani, and Massimo Zancanaro. 2022. SMARTER: an IoT learning game to teach math. In Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI ’22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3531073.3534467
  15. Margherita Andrao, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, Ren Manfredi, Barbara Treccani, and Massimo Zancanaro. 2022. End-User Programming and Math Teachers: an Initial Study. In Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI ’22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:10.1145/3531073.3534493
  16. Ren Manfredi, Margherita Andrao, Massimo Zancanaro, Barbara Treccani, Giuseppe Desolda, and Francesco Greco. 2022. Toward a better understanding of End-User Debugging strategies: a pilot study. In Proc. of the third International Workshop "EMPATHY: Empowering People in Dealing with Internet of Things Ecosystems", CEUR-WS, Rome, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3172/short6.pdf
  17. Bernardo Breve, Giuseppe Desolda, Vincenzo Deufemia, Francesco Greco, and Maristella Matera. 2021. An End-User Development Approach to Secure Smart Environments. In End-User Development. IS-EUD 2021, Springer, Cham, 36–52. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-79840-6_3
  18. Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, Massimo Zancanaro, and Maria Francesca Costabile. 2021. Extending Task Automation Systems with Event-State-Condition-Action Capabilities. In Proc. of the second International Workshop "EMPATHY: Empowering People in Dealing with Internet of Things Ecosystems", CEUR-WS, Bari, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3053/paper_10.pdf
  19. Bernardo Breve, Giuseppe Desolda, Vincenzo Deufemia, Francesco Greco, and Maristella Matera. 2021. Enabling End-Users to Specify Security Rules with the EFESTO-5W Platform. In Proc. of the second International Workshop "EMPATHY: Empowering People in Dealing with Internet of Things Ecosystems", CEUR-WS, Bari, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-3053/paper_9.pdf
  20. Giuseppe Desolda and Francesco Greco. 2020. Integrating the Node-RED server in an IoT platform for ECA rules management. In Proc. of the first International Workshop "EMPATHY: Empowering People in Dealing with Internet of Things Ecosystems", CEUR-WS, Ischia, Italy. URL: ceur-ws.org/Vol-2702/EMPATHY_2020_paper_9.pdf

Book Chapters

  1. Bernardo Breve, Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, and Vincenzo Deufemia. 2023. Democratizing Cybersecurity in Smart Environments: Investigating the Mental Models of Novices and Experts. In End-User Development, Lucio Davide Spano, Albrecht Schmidt, Carmen Santoro and Simone Stumpf (eds.). Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, 145–161. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-34433-6_9
  2. Sergio Caputo, Giovanna Castellano, Francesco Greco, Corrado Mencar, Niccolò Petti, and Gennaro Vessio. 2022. Human Detection in Drone Images Using YOLO for Search-and-Rescue Operations. In AIxIA 2021 – Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Stefania Bandini, Francesca Gasparini, Viviana Mascardi, Matteo Palmonari and Giuseppe Vizzari (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 326–337. DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-08421-8_22
  3. Giuseppe Desolda, Francesco Greco, Francisco Guarnieri, Nicole Mariz, and Massimo Zancanaro. 2021. SENSATION: An Authoring Tool to Support Event–State Paradigm in End-User Development. In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021, Carmelo Ardito, Rosa Lanzilotti, Alessio Malizia, Helen Petrie, Antonio Piccinno, Giuseppe Desolda and Kori Inkpen (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 373–382. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_22

Projects