Collegio Einaudi Scientific Committee

She has been a Full Professor since 2000 in Materials Science and Technology at Politecnico di Torino.
From September 2021 till February 2024, she assumed the role of Pro-Rector, and from 2018 until 2021, she served as Vice-Rector for Strategic Assessments at the Polytechnic of Turin.
She has authored or co-authored numerous national and European patents and more than 200 publications in international journals or presented at international conferences.
Through the LINCE Research Center, in her role as head, she has strengthened the relationship between universities and companies in the traditional and innovative fields of materials, promoting technological innovations related to processes and products.
She served, during the three-year period 2020-2023, as non-operating chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Collegio Einaudi Foundation.

A Sinologist and sociologist of migration, he graduated in Political Science from the University of Milan and received his PhD in East Asian Civilizations, Cultures and Societies from the University of Rome – La Sapienza.
He has been professionally engaged in applied social research in the field of migration studies since 1995. Among the founding members of the social cooperative Codici | Research and Intervention, he collaborates there with research, training and consulting activities on issues of migration and cultural diversity. He studied Chinese language at the University of Milan and at Hangzhou University in China. From 1994 to 2004 he worked as a linguistic-cultural mediator for Milan’s territorial socio-educational services. Since 2021 he has been associate professor and teaching professor of Chinese language and culture at the Department of Human Sciences and Innovation for the Territory of the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria in Como, where he has been teaching since 2006 as part of the degree course in Science of Interlinguistic and Intercultural Mediation.
He is a member and Research Fellow of the Turin World Affairs Institute, as well as con-Director and member of the editorial board of OrizzonteCina magazine, for which he edits the column CinesItaliani, and the magazine Mondo Cinese. He is Director of the Center for Research on Minorities (CERM) at the University of Insubria. He has published several essays and articles on immigration in Italy and how growing cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious pluralism is transforming Italian society and culture, as well as on cross-cultural dynamics between Chinese and non-Chinese in contemporary Chinese society.

She has been a full professor of Environmental and Applied Botany since 2015 and has served as Director of the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology and Botanical Garden of the University of Turin since 2021. She is Chair of the Academic Senate’s Education Committee. She was President of the Italian Botanical Society from 2015 to 2021. She was a member of the Council of the Gran Paradiso National Park from 1995 to 2007.
Her research interests mainly concern the vegetation of the Alps and the impact of climate change and land use over time on ecosystems, with particular reference to ecosystem services. Recently, she has expanded her studies on the role of plants in maintaining biogeochemical balances.
Her research is largely aimed at biodiversity and conservation, with applications to disturbed and polluted land areas.

Ph.D. in physics since 2007, he has been an associate professor since 2015. Among others, he teaches courses on detectors and particle accelerators for the master’s degree in physics and the graduate school of medical physics.
He is a member of the collaboration and management board of the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. He is the current project leader of the experiment’s muon spectrometer.
He has authored about 400 publications in the field of ultrarelativistic heavy ion physics and the experimental study of quantum chromodynamics. He has also worked on Resistive Plate Chambers detectors, luminosity measurements at LHC, and control systems for high-energy physics experiments.
He is also a member of the organizing committee of the international school for doctoral students Study Days on Detectors.

A manager, PhD researcher, senior consultant and expert trainer for innovation and change in organizations in the areas of work, education and training for over twenty years.
He is currently Research & Development Director of Enaip Friuli Venezia Giulia and a member of the national coordination of EnAIP NET, one of the largest training consortia in Europe.
Among other assignments: consultant and project manager of several Capacity Building projects at national and international level; as an expert on training policies and new competencies for the future (soft skills, digital competencies and entrepreneurship) he is a member of the AG3 of EUSALP (Labour Market, Education and Training) and of the Graduate Tracking Expert Group of the European Commission; lecturer in university and adult education in Creativity, Design Thinking, Business Modelling and Change Management.

A Management Engineer by training, Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering since 2007, he is Associate Professor of Production Technology and Systems at the Polytechnic University of Turin.
Research areas range from Innovation Management and Technology Management to product development process and design management. He completed a seminar course related to ‘Teaching Case Method’ Level I and II at Harvard University in 2019. He collaborates with A.I.TE.M. and the Design Society; of the latter, he is on the advisory board. He has served as a scientific reviewer for conference/conference events (including ICED, DESIGN and IFAC-INCOM), as well as for journals in the field (e.g. RED, IJATM, EJIM, IJPR, JPME). She frequently collaborates with public and private entities on research and consulting projects in the areas of Innovation Management, Product and Service Design, and Marketing. She has also served as an evaluator of innovation projects both nationally and internationally.

Since 2012 she has been Director of the Piemonte Innova Foundation, the public-private partnership that enables and accelerates innovation and digitization of Businesses and Non-Profit Organizations and supports Public Administrations in the development of sustainable and replicable innovation projects. Since 2013, she has also been Secretary General of “Smart Communities Tech,” the National Cluster that unites more than 150 territorial, industrial and research partners and more than 50 cities, who collaborate on the development of innovation projects for the management of urban and metropolitan areas.
She was appointed as a member of the Expert Group for Urban Policies, established in 2022 by the Ministry of Sustainable Infrastructure and Mobility, helping to write the “Urban Agenda” published by it in October 2022; since 2021, she has been a member of the “Industrial Policies and Ecological Transition” working group established by CNEL to monitor and analyze the implementation stages of the PNRR; for Federmanager, she participates in the ASVIS working group on Goal 17 (Partnership for Goals). In more than two decades of activity, she has developed skills ranging from the management of innovation processes, to the animation of complex and multidisciplinary networks, to the digital transition of enterprises, entities and territories. Among her many other roles: she is a member of the Board of Directors of the “STEM By Women” Association for the promotion of STEM careers.

The work that Azzurra Spirito accomplishes is one that does not yet exist, which is why it takes very different names and changes all the time.
In 2023 it can be narrated like this: it facilitates people working in different realities (public entities, startups, companies, research or technology transfer centers, universities, large companies, investment realities, associations) to develop a long-term view, build a shared vision with other actors involved in the socio-technical system of reference, explore alternative futures and design innovative devices on a collaborative basis capable of remaining sensitive to the evolutions of the context in which they are inserted. To do so, it adopts different tools and methods, experimenting with hybrid frameworks (e.g. futures & foresight science, design thinking, and systems thinking). All of this approaches the concepts of transformative innovation, new forms of governance and policy design. He works in diverse fields, with a focus on those that are the intersection of different fields. The themes to which she is devoting design energy at the moment are fair and just transition, new generations, energy poverty, and reuse of spaces for social purposes with a view to generating cohesion. As a lecturer he works for realities such as Luiss Guido Carli University, Bicocca University, ImpactSkills, TechSoup. As a consultant she has worked with realities such as Arter, Feltrinelli Foundation, Torino Social Impact, Unione Valli del Savio and Collegio Einaudi. She is currently a consultant for the City of Milan within the European network Energy Poverty Hub and a selected researcher for an evaluation research promoted by the Nucleus of Evaluation and Analysis for Programming, Department for Cohesion Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – NUVAP.

He is Professor of Experimental Pedagogy at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin and Director of the Interateneo Center for Secondary Teacher Education of Piedmont.
He works on empirical research in education, design and evaluation of educational and training processes, cognitive enhancement. Among his recent publications: I think therefore I learn. A Guide to Cognitive Enhancement (Milan, Pearson, 2022); Assessing Learning in University Teaching (Verona, QuiEdit, 2021); (with A. Calvani) Ten False Myths and Ten Rules for Teaching Well (Rome, Carocci, 2019); (with D. Robasto) I Mixed Methods in educational research (Milan, Mondadori, 2019); Building and certifying competencies with the vertical curriculum in the first cycle (Milan, Rizzoli Education, 2018); Building and certifying competencies in the second cycle (Milan, Rizzoli Education, 2018); (with A. Parola) Educating to the processes and languages of learning (Milan, FrancoAngeli, 2017).