Operation Manager of Dhitech where she has worked since its establishment in 2007 contributing to its growth and development. She is a chartered accountant and auditor and, after the degree in Economics and the Master in Business Administration, she specialized in auditing at a multinational consulting company. She worked for both private and public institutions developing a deep knowledge of their procedures and processes. She has gained a significant experience in project management methodologies, technology transfer and coordination of large complex scientific research projects (technological innovation) and training projects, co-financed by international or national funds.

Management Engineer, graduated with honors in 2004 from the University of Calabria, in 2006 he obtained a master’s degree from the University of Salento, where he started working in the same year. At Dhitech since 2012, he is involved in the design, coordination and management of complex Research, Development and Training projects, financed within the framework of EU/National/Regional Programs. He is the author of 2 scientific publications.

Economist and Blogger. She currently works at the Dept. of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, as the Coordinator of the Urban Farming Lab research activities and communications. Her focus is on sustainable food production technology (particularly aquaponics), and sustainable urban food systems. She is the founder of the Blog ‘Stasera Mi Porto a Cena Fuori (Tonight I’ll Take Myself out for Dinner)’, where she writes about sustainable food experiences all over Italy’s gourmet restaurants.

President of Confindustria Lecce since 2016. Former president of the IT Section of Lecce, today he holds various positions in the Confindustria area at a territorial, regional and national level. He is the founder and CEO of Links Management and Technology Spa, a company specializing in IT and IT consultancy, founded in Lecce 20 years ago and which employs 500 people throughout the Country.

Legal Officer at the Joint Secretariat of INTERREG IPA CBC Italy Albania Montenegro. He is lawyer (admitted to Italian Bar) and of counsel of several universities, public and private institutions and NGOs in EU and international projects (research and innovation projects including FP7, H2020 and Jean Monnet Programme) and international cooperation projects (including EuropeAid, ENPI CBC, Interreg Greece-Italy). He is assistant professor of international and EU law (Adjunkt) at Vistula University of Warsaw – Faculty of Business and International Relations (Poland) and former contract professor at Salento University and School for Young Lawyers of Salento University, Italy. Academic background: degree in law, visiting scholar at Hebrew University (Israel) Center for International and Comparative Law, post-graduate master in Management of Public Administration, PhD in international trade law at the Advanced School ISUFI of Lecce (Italy), post-graduate specialization in International Law and Private International Law at Hague Academy of International Law (The Netherlands).

President of Dhitech Scarl and Director of the Department of Economics of the University of Salento, where he is also Full Professor in Economics of Financial Intermediaries. He is the author of several publications on digital banking and fintech, credit and banking risk, governance, financing in support of technology transfer.

Researcher at ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development. He works for the Strategic Support Unit of the Direction of the Department and he is in charge of supporting the valorization of the research results of the Department, especially in the sector of Advanced Manufacturing and Raw Materials (KIC, Clusters, etc.), supporting the policy and strategy of the Department with institutional and industrial actors in the Apulia region (Industrial Associations, Regional and Local governing bodies, local RTO, Industrial Technological District, etc.). His business developing manager of Regional Center Southern Italy of the KIC Raw Materials. As senior tech transfer expert, he is senior project officer of Enterprise Europe Network from 2011 and Key Account Manager and senior innovation adviser (EIMC sevices) for EASME from 2014. Main scientific activities are in PVD methods used to obtain coatings and metal nanosclusters for fuel cells and catalysis of sensor active materials. He has co–authored more than 75 scientific papers (H index 23) published in leading refereed journals in thin films, surface technology and gas sensor devices fields, participating periodically at the major national/international conferences in material science. He is author of 4 Italian patents on polymer nanostructures, gas sensors and reference materials.

Operation Manager of Dhitech where she has worked since its establishment in 2007 contributing to its growth and development. She is a chartered accountant and auditor and, after the degree in Economics and the Master in Business Administration, she specialized in auditing at a multinational consulting company. She worked for both private and public institutions developing a deep knowledge of their procedures and processes. She has gained a significant experience in project management methodologies, technology transfer and coordination of large complex scientific research projects (technological innovation) and training projects, co-financed by international or national funds.

Founder and Director of the CNR Institute of Nanotechnology, where he is also coordinator of the Molecular Nanotechnology group. He is member of the European Laboratory of Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS) Scientific Board, member of the Administration Board of the High Tech District (DHITECH), coordinator of the Precision Medicine Technopole in Lecce and Director of the CNR Interdepartmental Research Center in Taranto. He has been Coordinator of the National Energy Platform of Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and of the CNR National Project EFOR on Renewable Energies. His main research activities involve: Study and fabrication of organic optoelectronic/photonic devices, microfluidic laboratories on chip and drug delivery systems for advanced Theranostics. He is author of more than 450 publications (h-index=63) on International Journals with more than 15000 citations, several chapters in scientific books, 20 International and Italian patents and more than 60 Invited talks in International Conferences. He is and has been coordinator of several research projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (MIUR) and European Community (EU), as well as responsible of several industrial projects with Italian and international companies. He is co-founder of Mediteknology s.r.l., CNR spin off aiming at the developing of new organic systems for optoelectronic and medical applications, BF2 srl, start up aiming at the developing of new nanoparticles for cancer therapy and Daunia Solar Cell, start up active in the field of photovoltaic technologies.

Palmalisa Marra is a computer engineer and is responsible of the Research and Development area of Links Management and Technology S.p.A.. She managed many research projects funded by national, regional and European research calls with application in SMART Cities (gov, tourism, health) and Banking domains.

Graziano Pappadà is an application consultant and bioinformatician at Exprivia S.p.A., where he is involved in the research, design and development of innovative ICT solutions for Digital Health and Genomics.

Federica Paladini, Ph.D., is materials engineer and co-founder of CareSilk. Author of more than 40 scientific papers and inventor of 7 patents, she has 15 years’ experience in R&D activities in bioengineering and materials science.

PhD in Management Engineering and researcher at the Department of Innovation Engineering of the University of Salento. Responsible for the DEFIND (Digital Engineering for Industry) area of CORELab in which research topics related to technological innovation in complex sectors are addressed

Research Fellow at University of Salento. Computer Engineering (management orientation) with competence on Business Process Management, Project Management, Processes reengineering, Process mining, ICT, definition of Software Architectures. He is experienced in projects on healthcare, public administration, transport and aerospace.

Pumps, Valves and FGS Senior Products Manager. Education: Politecnico di Bari – Degree in Mechanical Engineering. In Baker Hughes (Nuovo Pignone) since 1999. 18 years experience in Engineering, in 2013-16 PVS ENG Manager, 2 years in Manufacturing (Assy & testing leader), since last Jan 2019 to date in Product Leadership. Three years ranked 1st Lt, Italian Army … married … one daughter. All Sports fan … especially Motor Racing, Volley and Tennis.

Rosaria Lovecchio is a researcher of the Open Public Service Innovation Unit of the R&D Office at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica. She is PhD in Business Administration. She contributes to the research activities in the areas of service co-creation, methodologies for open service innovation and new sustainability models.

Daniele Perrone, PhD, is a researcher at the University of Salento and an affiliate researcher at the IUSS University School of Pavia. He collaborates with the EUCENTRE Foundation and since 2019 he is Executive Director of the International SPONSE Association.

Dr. Pietro Siciliano received his degree in physics in 1985 from the University of Lecce. He took the Ph.D. in Physics in 1989 at the University of Bari. He is currently a Director of Research at the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM-CNR) at CNR in Lecce, where he has been working from many years in the field of Sensors, MEMS, Microsystems, Multifunctional Smart Systems Integration and Digitalisation, being in charge of the Sensors and Microsystems group. He is author of about 400 scientific papers with an h-index 50. He is referee and member of the advisory board of many international journals. He has been responsible for several national and international projects at IMM-CNR. He is member of the Steering Committee of AISEM, the Italian Association on Sensors and Microsystems. He has been chairman and member of the organising committee of international Conferences and Schools. He is President of INNOVAAL scarl and President of the Italian Cluster on “Smart Living Technologies (SMILE)”

Team & Technical Leader – Business and Application Consultant – Unit Research and Development at EKA S.r.l. Graduated as Computer Engineering at the University of Bologna, in 2014, among other things, he obtained the Certification “Business Process Application Development – BonitaSoft” and “Advanced Integration – BonitaSoft”. His main competences come out from activities, such as: Business Process and Project Management, Business Application Consultant, Technical leader, Solution Architect & Developer. He was Project Manager in all EKA’s R&D projects, and as manager of the activities he has dealt with the definition of the innovative method of knowledge management and implementation of Robotic Process Automation logics; process modeling, implementation and execution; validation and final integrated assessment of the project. He also took part in several other activities and projects as Business and Application Consultant. He also obtained the Certification “Business Processes: Modeling, Simulation, Execution” issued by Hasso Plattner Institut, on July 2019.

Michelangelo Ceci, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bari, Italy. He is also a senior research fellow at the Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia. He published more than 150 papers in journals and conferences on Machine Learning and Data Mining. He is the unit coordinator of EU and national projects (FP7 and H2020). He was PC co-chair of SEBD2007, Discovery Science 2016, ISMIS2018 and General Chair of ECML-PKDD2017. He has been in the PC of many leading conferences (e.g., IEEE ICDM, SDM, IJCAI and AAAI) and he is associate editor of the journals Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery and Machine Learning Journal.

Associate professor of experimental physics at the University of Salento, Andrea Ventura is involved since 2003 in physics studies with the ATLAS experiment, running at CERN in Geneva. For INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics), he coordinates the collider physics scientific area in Lecce, participates in many outreach activities and is the referent for technology transfer.

ICT Manager and Lead Auditor (Accredia Database), for about 30 years in the IT of two major Italian strategic sectors, Energy and Automotive, in the context of ICT projects for public and private companies. Since 1992 he has worked for international and national companies (also for Public Administration) in which he has held different roles in the management, development and audit of information systems and in particular for information security and coordination of ICT projects.

Co-Founder / Partner of Altea spa and Chief Public Tender Officer. Board Member of Dhitech.

Founder, CEO, Innovator. Entrepreneur & Business Developer, transforming ideas into enterprise projects, products, systems and architectures, based on cloud technologies, big data & smart data analytics and artificial intelligence. My mission: to provide customers with best-of-breed consultancy, advice and solutions on IT, Processes and Organization investments to have business innovated, productivity and efficiency optimized.

Entrepreneur, CEO & CTO at ZeroDD

President of Dhitech Scarl and Director of the Department of Economics of the University of Salento, where he is also Full Professor in Economics of Financial Intermediaries. He is the author of several publications on digital banking and fintech, credit and banking risk, governance, financing in support of technology transfer.

Associate Professor in Economics of Financial Intermediaries at the Department of Economics of the University of Salento. Delegate of the Rector for Relations with Companies, Subsidiaries and Spin-offs of the University of Salento. Authors of several publications on the subject of digital banking and fintech, governance in banks, enhancement of market research.

Degree in Management Engineering, specialization in Production Systems. PhD in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Knoweldge Transfer Manager at the Department of Economics of the University of Salento.

Gianluca Elia is Assistant Professor in Management Engineering at the Department of Engineering for Innovation at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy), where he teaches “Digital Business”. Initially, his research focused on models and tools for Knowledge Management and Competence Development. Afterwards, he focused on Digital Business and Digital Entrepreneurship, Open Innovation and Collective Intelligence, Project Management. On these topics, he published more than 140 papers on international journals and conference proceedings; he also co-authored five books. He acts as reviewer in international journals and conferences, and is member of the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management and International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management. In 2014 he was a visiting researcher at Peking University in Beijing (China), and in 2014-2015 he was research affiliate at Centre for Collective Intelligence of the MIT in Boston (USA).

37 years old, Telecommunications Engineer, IT Architect and Technical Project Manager with over 10 years of experience in the telecommunications sector. Many years of experience in IT infrastructures with a focus on cloud and digital transformation, computer vision, project management and redefinition of IT strategies.