My name is Tobia Bocchi. I am an Italian professional track & field athlete and a computer science engineer.
You can find my public PGP key here
Sport
I started track & field in 2006, at the age of 9, while also playing rugby in my hometown’s team. Growing up, I reached a point where playing two sports at a high level was too physically demanding, not to mention the fact that in the meantime I was attending the local ‘scientific’ high school. Leaving rugby broke my heart, but my decision regarding track was very certain.
A few of the best memories I carry with me from my youth career are the first U16 national title in 2012 and the silver medal at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China in 2014. Now I am on the Italian national team, and in the last few years, I have collected a few other good memories: my first national title (2021) where I also scored the standard for the Tokyo Olympic Games, where I competed and ranked 13th in August, and the silver medal at the Mediterranean Games in Oran (2022). I am currently training with one goal: Paris 2024.
Point of Contact
Track & field takes up a big chunk of my life. But the main purpose of this website, other than telling you a little about me, is to share my notes, knowledge, and activities in the field of computer science. And it’s probably thanks to my sport that I fell in love so much with the subject. In 2016, I was offered the opportunity to fly to Los Angeles to attend UCLA with an athletic scholarship, an opportunity that 18-year-old me could not miss out on. On the athletic side, this turned out not to be the best choice for me, but on the academic side, I learned the basics of a subject in one of the world’s best universities in a very competitive and stimulating environment. This lit a spark inside my head.
Computer Science
During my sophomore year at UCLA, I faced some very critical health issues that put my life and athletic career at risk. I was forced to come back home and recover. I finished my undergraduate degree at the local university where I was frustrated most of the time because it was not the same competitive, dynamic, and cutting-edge environment that I loved at UCLA. My graduation grade was 108/110 and my final thesis’ title was “Wait Time Prediction For The Italian Healthcare System Using Machine Learning Algorithms”. For the final project, I implemented a model to predict the waiting times of people at healthcare structures (mainly hospitals). After finishing my undergraduate degree, I decided to continue my studies in the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, UniMoRe Where I graduated from my master with 110 Cum Laude. My final thesis was titled “Securing The Lens: Designing a General Framework for performing Security Assessments on Internet Connected Cameras”.
