Rosaria Conte
Rosaria Conte (14 April 1954 in Rome – 5 July 2016 in Rome) was an Italian social scientist. She was the head of the Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation at the ISTC-CNR in Rome, which hosts an interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection among cognitive, social and computational sciences. She was President of European Social Simulation Association and AISC (Italian Cognitive Science Association). Rosaria Conte published more than 130 works among volumes, papers in scientific journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. Her scientific activity aims at explaining social behaviour among intelligent autonomous systems, and modeling the  dynamics of norms and norm-enforcement mechanisms (including reputation and gossip). Her research was characterized by a highly interdisciplinary approach, at the intersection among cognitive, social and computational sciences. In her name, the European Social Simulation Association assigns every other year the Outstanding Contribution Award for Social Simulation, whose first recipients are Nigel Gilbert and Uri Wilensky. Career. Conte was born in Foggia. She studied philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1980 she received a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Department of Sociology, UCSD, USA, under the supervision of the sociologist Aaron Cicourel. In 1985 she completed her education with  a visiting period at the Department of Psychology of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. Rosaria Conte's scientific interest focused on Social order, Agent Theory, Emergence and the Evolution of Social institutions, Deontic logic, Social simulation and Cultural evolution. From 1982 to 2001 she was Junior Scientist at the Institute of Psychology (IP, now Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology, ISTC) of Cnr. In 1998 she founded the Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation (LABSS), at ISTC-CNR. In the same period she started teaching Social Psychology at the University of Siena. In 2001 she became Honorary Associate Researcher  at Center for Policy Making of Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. In 2006 she was elected President of AISC (Italian Cognitive Science Association), and in 2008 became President of the European Social Simulation Association. In 2015 she became Vice Head of the Psychology Faculty at the Università telematica internazionale Uninettuno. Rosaria Conte was Vice President of the Scientific Committee of the National Research Council (Italy) and Member of the Italian National Bioethics Committee. She died in Rome in 2016.