Elena Di Lavore

Photo of Elena Di Lavore I am a researcher in the Compositional Systems and Methods group at Tallinn University of Technology. Until January 2026, I was a research associate at the University of Oxford, working with Sam Staton as a creator for the ARIA Safeguarded AI program. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pisa, working with Filippo Bonchi. Until November 2023, I was a PhD student in the Compositional Systems and Methods group at Tallinn University of Technology under the supervision of Paweł Sobociński.

Publications

Coinductive Streams in Monoidal Categories, LMCS, Volume 21, Issue 3
EDL, Giovanni de Felice and Mario Román arXiv
Order in Partial Markov Categories, MFPS XLI
EDL, Mario Román, Paweł Sobociński and Márk Széles
[arXiv]
Tape Diagrams for Monoidal Monads, CALCO 2025
Filippo Bonchi, Cipriano Junior Cioffo, Alessandro Di Giorgio and EDL
[arxiv]
Effectful Mealy Machines: Bisimulation and Trace, LiCS 2025 (distinguished)
Filippo Bonchi, EDL and Mario Román
[arXiv] [slides of CALCO invited talk]
Dialectica Petri nets, Fundamenta Informaticae, Volume 194, Issue 3.
EDL, Wilmer Leal and Valeria de Paiva
[arXiv preprint]
A Diagrammatic Algebra for Program Logics, FoSSaCS 2025
Filippo Bonchi, Alessandro Di Giorgio and EDL
[arXiv preprint]
Strong Induction is an up-to Technique, CSL 2025
Filippo Bonchi, EDL and Anna Ricci
A Coalgebraic Model of Quantum Bisimulation, ACT 2024
Lorenzo Ceragioli, EDL, Giuseppe Lormurno and Gabriele Tedeschi
Categorical Foundation of Explainable AI: A Unifying Theory, xAI 2024
Francesco Giannini, Stefano Fioravanti, Pietro Barbiero, Alberto Tonda, Pietro Liò, and EDL
[arXiv]
Monoidal Width, LMCS, Volume 19, Issue 3
EDL and Paweł Sobociński
[arXiv]
Evidential Decision Theory via Partial Markov Categories, LiCS 2023
EDL and Mario Román
[arXiv] [Slides]
Span(Graph): a Canonical Feedback Algebra of Open Transition Systems, Software and Systems Modeling
EDL, Alessandro Gianola, Mario Román, Nicoletta Sabadini and Paweł Sobociński
[arXiv]
Monoidal Width: Capturing Rank Width, ACT 2022
EDL and Paweł Sobociński
[arXiv] [Slides]
Monoidal Streams for Dataflow Programming, LiCS 2022 (Kleene award, distinguished)
EDL, Giovanni de Felice and Mario Román
[arXiv]
Compositional modelling of network games, 2021, CSL 2021
EDL, Jules Hedges and Paweł Sobociński
[arXiv] [Slides]
A canonical algebra of open transition systems, FACS 2021
EDL, Alessandro Gianola, Mario Román, Nicoletta Sabadini, Paweł Sobociński
[arXiv]
Functorial language games for question answering, ACT 2021
Giovanni de Felice, EDL, Mario Román, Alexis Toumi
[arXiv]

Preprints and extended abstracts

Filippo Bonchi, EDL, Mario Román and Sam Staton, Program Logics via Distributive Monoidal Categories, arXiv preprint 2025.
EDL and Mario Román, Graded Coalgebras of Monads for Continuous time Dynamics, CALCO 2025 early ideas.
EDL, Mario Román and Paweł Sobociński, Partial Markov Categories, arXiv preprint 2025.
EDL and Mario Román, Timing via Pinwheel Double Categories, arXiv preprint 2025.
EDL, Bart Jacobs and Mario Román, A Simple Formal Language for Probabilistic Decision Problems, arXiv preprint 2024.
EDL and Paweł Sobociński, Monoidal Width: Unifying Tree width, Path Width and Branch Width, arXiv preprint 2022.

Academic service

(April 2026): program committee member for the ACT 2026 conference.
(February 2026): program committee member for the CMCS 2026 workshop.
(April 2025): program committee member for the MFPS 2025 conference.
(March 2025): program committee member for the ACT 2025 conference.
(since November 2023): member of the steering committee of the Adjoint School.
(since May 2023): member of the executive board of Compositionality.
(8-9 September 2022): local co-organiser SYCO 9 at the University of Insubria, Como.
(May 2022): program committee member for the ACT 2022 conference.
(September 2021 - August 2023): co-organiser of the ACT Adjoint school 2022 and 2023.

Teaching

(Autumn 2025): Teaching assistant for the Categories, Proofs and Processes course, University of Oxford.
(Spring 2024): Co-supervision of the BSc thesis of Anna Ricci at the University of Pisa, with Filippo Bonchi, work published in CSL2025.
(Spring 2024): Co-supervision of the BSc thesis of Francesco Stefani at the University of Pisa, with Filippo Bonchi.
(Spring 2024): Teaching assistant for the Introduction to Category Theory course, University of Pisa.
(Spring 2023): Teaching assistant for the Introduction to Category Theory course, TalTech.
(Spring 2021): Teaching assistant for the Introduction to Category Theory course, Tallinn University of Technology.

Talks

(23 December 2025): talk at the 6th ItaCa Workshop.
(23 June 2025): talk at the Logic Mentoring Workshop colocated with LiCS 2025.
(17 June 2025): invited talk at CALCO 2025 (associated abstract).
(17 June 2025): talk at CALCO 2025 (with Mario Román).
(4 June 2025): invited talk at the LHC days.
(24 April 2025): invited talk at SYCO 13.
(13 March 2025): invited talk at the Chocola seminar (IRIF, Paris).
(12 March 2025): talk at IRIF (Paris).
(19 June 2024): talk at ACT (distinguished).
(16 May 2024): talk at the Topos Institute Colloquium (recording).
(9 April 2024): talk (University of Padova).
(19 March 2024): talk at theProcess Theory for Security Protocols and Cryptography workshop (Tallinn University of Technology).
(8 March 2024): talk at the OASIS seminar (University of Oxford).
(29 February 2024): talk at the Challenges and Perspectives of Formal Methods for Trustworthy Software seminar series (University of Pisa).
(8 January 2024): talk at Directions and Perspectives in the λ-calculus (University of Bologna).
(22 November 2023): talk at the Nordic Workshop on Programming Theory.
(1 August 2023): talk at ACT (distinguished).
(18 July 2023): talk at the Coresources workshop (University of Cambridge).
(17 July 2023): talk for the Bob Walters tribute (Tallinn University of Technology).
(27 June 2023): talk at LiCS (conference paper).
(25 June 2023): talk at the QuaLog workshop.
(14 June 2023): talk at the CatNiP workshop (University of Edinburgh).
(26 April 2023): talk at the ItaCa fest (recording).
(1 August 2022): talk at the WiL workshop.
(22 July 2022): talk at the ACT2022 conference (conference paper and recording of the talk).
(26 June 2022): talk at the FMCS workshop.
(25 May 2022): talk at the Comonads Meetup (online).
(24 May 2022): talk at the Mathematical Foundations Seminar (online, University of Bath).
(14 December 2021): talk at SYCO 8.
(13 December 2021): talk at SYCO 8.
(26 January 2021): talk at the CSL 2021 conference (conference paper and recording of the talk).

Events

(January 2025): started a postdoctoral position with Sam Staton at the Computer Science Department of the University of Oxford.
(October, November 2024): academic visit to the Compositional Systems and Methods research group at Tallinn University of Technology.
(March 2024): academic visit to Mario Román at the University of Oxford.
(1 January 2024): started a postdoctoral position with Filippo Bonchi at the Computer Science Department of the University of Pisa.
(17 November 2023): I defended my PhD thesis with Samson Abramsky and Dan Marsden as opponents.
(November 2022): academic visit to Jamie Vicary at the University of Cambridge (slides).
(August 2022): our LiCS2022 paper on Monoidal Streams won the Kleene Award and was chosen as a distinguished paper.
(June 2022): academic visit to Fabio Gadducci and Filippo Bonchi at the University of Pisa.
(March 2020 - July 2020): participated in the ACT school 2020 in the Dialectica categories for Petri nets project under the supervision of Valeria de Paiva. We wrote a blogpost on the nCafé.

Notes

CV summary

February 2026 - present: researcher at Tallinn University of Technology in the Compositional Systems and Methods group.
January 2025 - January 2026: research associate at the Computer Science Department, University of Oxford, with Sam Staton.
January 2024 - December 2024: postdoctoral researcher at the Computer Science Department, Università di Pisa, with Filippo Bonchi.
November 2019 - November 2023: PhD at Tallinn University of Technology under the supervision of Paweł Sobociński.
September 2018 - September 2019: MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, where I learned category theory.
September 2017 - September 2018: BSc in Mathematics at Università di Pisa, where I studied some pure math.
September 2014 - July 2017: BSc in Mathematical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, where I studied the mathematics that is useful for engineering and some basics of engineering.

My CV