Her research interests include cooperative information systems, workflow management systems, information systems modeling and design, mobile information systems, temporal databases, applications of database technology. She holds a Dr. Eng. Degree from Politecnico di Milano and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Stanford University.

She has published around 35 papers in international journals, including IEEE and ACM Transactions, co-edited 10 books, and published about 120 papers at international level. She is an editor of the Requirements Engineering Journal. She is chief scientist of the Italian FIRB MAIS (Multichannel Adaptive Information Systems) Project, 2002-2005. She is chair of Working Group 8.1 on Design and Evaluation of Information Systems of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing).