Academic Speakers – Short Bios
Emilio Calvano is Full Professor of Economics at LUISS, Italy, and associate faculty member at the Toulouse School of Economics, France. He earned his Ph.D. from the Toulouse School of Economics. His research primarily revolves around competition dynamics in digital markets, examining the effects of technological advancements. His work has been featured in numerous prestigious journals, including Science, the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Management Science, among others. In 2023, he obtained a 1.9 million Euro ERC Advanced Grant for a project whose aim is to investigate the impact of Artificial Intelligence on markets and society at large.
Mario De Caro is a professor of Moral Philosophy at University Roma Tre, in Italy, and regularly a visiting professor at Tufts University in Boston. He has been a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard, a Visiting Scholar at MIT, and president of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy. Currently, he is the president of the Italian Society of Moral Philosophy, a member of the executive board of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, and the literary executor of Hilary Putnam. He has given talks at more than one hundred universities in seventeen countries. He is associate editor of The Journal of the American Philosophical Association, writes for Il Sole 24 Ore and La Stampa and is a consultant for ENEL on the ethics of artificial intelligence. The asteroid 5329 DeCaro has been named in his honor. His areas of expertise include moral philosophy, metaphysics, ethics of AI, philosophy of mind, philosophy of film, and the history of early modern philosophy.
Nan Jia is Dean’s Associate Professor in Business Administration at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, USA. She holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (Canada). Her research interests include corporate political strategy, business-governance relationships, applications of Artificial Intelligence technologies in management, and corporate governance in international business. Dr. Jia’s research has been published in top journals in strategic management, including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies, Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, Strategic Management Journal, among others. She currently serves as an associate editor for the Strategic Management Journal and on the editorial boards of other leading journals.
Industry Speakers – Short Bios
Silvia Chiapparrone is a Unipa Management Engineering Alumni with 13+ years of experience in the Digital Marketing landscape. As Senior Product Lead in Google, she is currently focused on driving the Go-To-Market and commercialisation strategy for ads Product solutions within the EMEA Retail sector. She has launched several AI powered solutions on the EMEA Retail market, including Performance Max, the main AI flagship Google ads campaign type.
Marco Li Mandri is the Global Head of Strategy Office in ING analytics, transforming the bank by embedding advanced analytics, AI, and Gen AI across all markets. Prior to that, he had extensive experience in in using data and analytics to achieve operational efficiency, in both his roles as Data & Analytics Product Area Lead in ING the Netherlands and Global Product Lead for AI in Operations. Before joining ING, he worked in Vodafone Italy, holding several roles as Operations Strategy Expert first and Digital & AI Product Manager, where he built omnichannel products based on AI. He holds a master’s degree in management engineering from the University of Palermo, and Six Sigma Black Belt executive master from MIP.
Cosimo Palmisano has 20 years of entrepreneurial experience in deep tech companies in the AI and industrial IoT fields. He conducted research at the Stern Business School in New York on AI/ML for CRM, obtaining a PhD in Industrial Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Bari. He is currently Head of Business Development at Wsense, a scale up deep tech company operating in the Blue Economy sector. In 2011, in California, he founded his first start-up in the Social CRM field, during a period spent in Silicon Valley as a Fulbright scholar, attending entrepreneurship courses at Stanford, Berkeley and Santa Clara University. As co-founder of Decisyon, he contributed to raising the highest investment round (more than 42 million dollars) for an Italian software company from an American fund. For 10 years he has been member of various investment committees (e.g., Smart&Start of Invitalia, the Venture fund of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), contributing to the evaluation of investments for more than 200 start-ups for a value exceeding 30 million euros. Since 2022 he has been a member of the expert jury of the EIC Accelerator Investment fund.
Carlo Purassanta is currently the Executive Chairman for Cerved Group and ION – EVP. He is also an Investor and an Advisor, with a focus on the Tech industry, and the author of the book “A Crucial Impetus”. He has previously been the President of Microsoft France (2018-2021), and the CEO of Microsoft Italy (2013-2017); he joined Microsoft in 2011 to lead the Enterprise Service Business Unit, after 15 years of career in IBM France and EMEA in Consulting, Management and Executive roles. During his tenure in Italy he has been a member of the General Council of Confindustria Digitale as well as the President of the Workgroup on SMEs value chains. He has been in the Advisory Board of Confindustria’s Foreign Investors Committee with a responsibility on “Research, innovation and education”. He currently is a Board Member of “Only The Brave” and “Diesel” in the fashion industry, he is Board Member for “CERVED” and for “CEDACRI” two Fintech companies owned by ION Group. He also is member of the Strategy Advisory Board of the “Graduate School Management”, formerly known as ‘MIP’, the Business School of Politecnico di Milano, and member of the Investment Committee of the “French Touch Fund” focused on SMEs acceleration. Mr. Purassanta holds an Engineering degree from Politecnico di Milano in Italy and a Master of Business Administration from Henley Business School in the UK.
