The new scientific director will be operational from January 2020
The Board of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology, IIT) has acknowledged the conclusion of the work of the specially-constituted Committee, consisting of six international experts and two Board members, namely: Roberto Car (Professor at Princeton University, USA), Francesco Sette (Director General of ESRF Grenoble, France), Oussama Khatib (Professor at Stanford University, USA), Paolo Lugli (Chancellor of the University of Bolzano, Italy), Adriano Aguzzi (Professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland), and Francesco Stellacci (Professor at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland) and, after the completion of the respective selection procedure, it has decided on the appointment of Prof. Giorgio Metta as the Institute’s future Scientific Director for the period 2020-2024. The appointment, unanimously approved, will come into effect on 1 January 2020, until which date Prof. Roberto Cingolani will continue his activities as Scientific Director of IIT.
Giorgio Metta has been Deputy Scientific Director of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia since 2016 and will remain in office until 31 December 2019. He currently directs the “iCub Facility” where he coordinates the development of the iCub project, the world’s most widely-used platform for the study of humanoid robotics, with 40 units present in universities and research centres in many countries including Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the USA and the UK. Giorgio Metta graduated in electronic engineering with honours (1994) and obtained a PhD (2000) from the University of Genoa. From 2001 to 2002, he was a researcher at the prestigious AI-Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He worked at the University of Genoa and since 2012 he has also been Professor of Cognitive Robotics at the University of Plymouth (UK). He has managed relations with funding organisations and international relations on behalf of IIT. He is involved in two of the Competence Centres created as part of the Italian Government’s “Industria 4.0” Plan (“Artes 4.0” and “Start 4.0”) and was one of the three Italian representatives at the 2018 G7 conference on Artificial Intelligence for the Ministry of Economic Development. As part of an initiative developed by the same ministry, he was recently appointed as a member of the panel on Artificial Intelligence. Giorgio Metta is author or co-author of more than 300 scientific publications (H-index on Google Scholar: 54) and in 2015 he published the book “Umani e Umanoidi” (Humans and Humanoids) for il Mulino together with Roberto Cingolani.
