CEO and General Manager, Leonardo, Italy
Roberto Cingolani is the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Leonardo S.p.A. He also serves as Senior Board Director of the NATO Innovation Fund, created by NATO countries to promote technological innovation in defense and security. He graduated in physics from the University of Bari and earned a Ph.D. in physics from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.
Cingolani's scientific and academic career spans decades. From 1988 to 1991, he was a staff member at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1991, he became a professor of physics at the University of Salento. In 1996, he was a visiting professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA, and a year later at Tokyo University, Japan. He was appointed full professor of experimental physics in 2000.
In 2001, Cingolani founded the National Nanotechnology Laboratory (NNL) of the National Institute for Physics of Matter (INFM) in Lecce, Italy. He was appointed Scientific Director and CEO of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in 2006, where he developed an interdisciplinary research strategy merging robotics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and nanotechnology. Under his leadership, IIT employed around 1,900 people from 60 countries, operated in 60,000 sqm facilities, and generated over 800 patents and 30 start-up companies.
In 2019, Cingolani was appointed Chief Technology & Innovation Officer of Leonardo, overseeing R&D, innovation strategies, digitalization, and sustainability. In February 2021, he became Minister for the Ecological Transition in Mario Draghi's government, responsible for environment, climate, and energy policy, as well as the ecological transition within Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Cingolani is the author and co-author of more than 1,100 papers in international journals and holds over 100 patents in fields such as materials science, semiconductor technologies, nanotechnologies, and robotics. He has received multiple awards for his contributions to science and technology and has been honored with three titles from the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic: "Alfiere del Lavoro" (1981), "Commendatore della Repubblica" (2006), and "Grand Ufficiale al merito della Repubblica Italiana" (2021).
