@He has over 200 international publications in journals, books and proceedings. His h-index is 59, with more than 10000 citations.
He has been ACM Distinguished Speaker from 2015 to 2021. He is a co-founder of AVIETRA, a company that creates VR applications for safety training, with a special focus on airlines and aviation.
Professor Chittaro's principal interest is in the disciplined design and rigorous evaluation of digital technologies such as virtual reality experiences, mobile apps, video games, and affective computing systems. He particularly focuses on systems to train people in facing risky and stressful situations, and to promote positive attitude and behavior change in users, especially in the health and safety domains.
He has received research grants from a wide range of organizations, including the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the European Union (EU), the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR), and companies such as the Benetton Group and the Intesa Sanpaolo bank group.
He has served as chair for the ACM Web3D conference (program co-chair, 2004 and 2005), the ACM Mobile HCI conference (chair 2003, general co-chair 2007, associate program committee chair 2010), the CHItaly conference (general co-chair, 2021), and as courses co-chair for ACM CHI 2008. He has been member of the ACM Mobile HCI Steering Committee for fifteen years (2003-2017). He has given tutorials at ACM conferences (Mobile HCI 2009, EICS 2011, Mobile HCI 2015), and chaired workshops at ACM CHI (2008) and Mobile HCI (2007). He has been chair of the Italian Chapter of ACM SIGCHI (2004-2006, 2006-2008). He has been Program Committee member for the ACM EICS conference (2011, 2012).
He has served for several other conferences: program chair of Persuasive 2014 (9th International Conference on Persuasive Technology); short papers co-chair of INTERACT 2005; associate chair for papers at INTERACT 2015 and 2021; six times (2011-2016) Senior Program Committee member of Advances in Computer Entertainment (ACE); program committee member of INTERACT (2007, 2009, 2013, 2021), UMAP (2005, 2009, 2010), IFIP ICEC (2006, 2007, 2008, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), AVI (2002, 2004, 2008, 2014, 2016), Persuasive (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), Smartgraphics (2009, 2010, 2011).
He has been keynote speaker at GALA 2023, Persuasive 2023, IFOTES 2023, Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2021, IFOTES 2019, IEEE Human-Systems Interaction 2009, IFIP World Computer Congress 2008, Workshop on Engineering Multimodal Interfaces 2009, IEE ICCSA 2006, Mobility 2004 international conference, and Eurographics EG IT 2007.
He serves on the Editorial Board of the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing journal, available in the ACM Digital Library. He has been editor of special issues of international journals such as Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Computers & Education. He is a member of the IFIP Working Group WG 13.5 (Resilience, Reliability, Safety and Human Error in System Development).
In addition to academic research, he is a strong advocate of the societal impact of HCI. He has enthusiastically worked with clinicians in various fields of health (e.g., physical rehabilitation, neurology, emergency medicine) as well as with safety experts in various areas (e.g., aviation safety, fire prevention, first response) to create innovative applications for real-world use. Two of his medical apps are currently in hospital use, while his aviation safety apps have received great attention from the public and the media, with over 20 million installations as of November 2023. They have also been featured on major TV stations such as Fox News and Discovery Channel as well as major news web sites such as TIME, Popular Mechanics, and Gizmodo.
He has been Coordinator of the Scientific Board and member of the Executive Board of GRIN (the national association of Italian university professors in Computer Science) for two terms (2008-2011, 2011-2014).
He served as panel member in the 2021 research grants call of the Academy of Finland's Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering. He has been evaluator for the scientific grants program of the US (National Science Foundation, NSF), New Zealand (Royal Society, Marsden Fund), Austria (Austrian Science Foundation, FWF), Ireland (Science Foundation Ireland, SFI), the Joint Research Scheme between Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (RGC), the Italian "Rita Levi Montalcini" MIUR program.