Wilma Penzo received her Laurea degree in Computer Science with honours from the University of Bologna in 1993 and the PhD degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the same University in 1997.
Since 1996, she has been a Research Associate (SSD ING-INF/05 - Information processing systems) at the Department of Electronics and Computer Science (DEIS), and since 2012 she is with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI), Engineering Faculty, at the University of Bologna.
Her scientific activity is set in the area of information and knowledge management, with particular interest in the study of techniques for the effective and efficient retrieval of information in large data collections, which are characterized by aspects such as distribution, heterogeneity in structural representation, ambiguity in the semantics of contents.
Recent research interests include Business Intelligence distributed systems, where she studies collaborative aspects for the retrieval of heterogeneous information, and data stream management systems, with particular attention to efficient data storage and to real-time query processing.
She also dealt with complex similarity and fuzzy query processing on semistructured and multimedia data, and indexing methods for graph-based data such as XML.

Since 1999 to 2003 she has cooperated with the CNR research centres CSITE and IEIIT of Bologna, where she has been charged a research about the integration of heterogeneous information in database systems and the World Wide Web as well as the study of techniques for the management of similarity queries on semistructured data.
She has been member of the Multimedia Database Group until 2005.
Since 2005 she is a member of the ISGroup reseach group at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia with research themes about query processing, query routing, and semantic clustering in peer-to-peer networks.
Since 2009 she is a Research Associate at the CNR Institute of Electronics and Information and Telecommunications Engineering (IEIIT), in Bologna, as a collaborator in projects about Infomobility with the Wireless Laboratory (Wilab).
She has published in several major journals in the field (such as IEEE TKDE, Information Systems, and IEEE Internet Computing) and in proceedings of top conferences.
She served as reviewer for several prestigious journals and major international conferences in the database field.

In 2010 she has been one organizer of the 1st International Workshop on Querying Graph-Structured Data (GraphQ2010) held in conjunction with the International Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS).
In 2013 she will be one of the general chairs of the 2nd edition of the GraphQ Workshop (GraphQ2013) held in conjunction with the ACM International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT).

Since 1996 Wilma Penzo teaches at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Bologna.
She has held/helds courses of Fundamentals of Computer Science, Computer Graphics, Information Systems, Computer Networks and Web Technologies.
Wilma Penzo has also been teaching at several University Master programmes and training courses at various institutions such as the Alma Graduate School, the Scuola Superiore per la Pubblica Amministrazione, the Profingest Consortium, the COFIMP Consortium in Bologna, where she has held many courses on themes pertaining to the information systems.