Francesco Profumo

Francesco Profumo, an Italian academic and politician, is currently the President of Compagnia San Paolo.

He graduated in 1977 in Electrotechnical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin, where he was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering (2003 – 2005) and Rector (2005 – 2011).

He was a member of the board of directors of Unicredit Private Bank, Sole 24 Ore, and Fidia Spa. Since 2011 he has been a member of the boards of directors of Fidia Spa, Telecom, and Pirelli.

Subsequently, he served as President of the National Research Council and Minister of Education, University and Research in the Monti government. Former President of Iren SpA (2013-2016), since 2014 he has been the President of the Bruno Kessler Foundation and since 2015 he has been President of the Board of Directors of INWIT, Infrastrutture Wireless Italiane S.p.A., a Telecom Italia group company. Since 2016 he has chaired the Compagnia di San Paolo.

He has published over 250 papers in international scientific journals and in the proceedings of international conferences.

He has been visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Nagasaki University, Czech Technical University in Prague and the University of Cordoba.

Francesco Profumo won the prize for the best second work of the IEEE-IAS Conference (United States) in 1991 and 1997, the prize for the best work of the IEEE-IAS Conference (United States) in 1992 and the IPEC Conference in 2005 in Japan. He has received numerous other awards and recognitions from various universities around the world, including the China Awards of the Italy-China Foundation in 2009, the Certificate of Appreciation of the Fulbright Commission in 2009, the Orden Universidad Javeriana of the Javeriana University of Bogota (Colombia) in 2010, the Escudo de Oro from the University of Antioch (Colombia) in 2010. Profumo is also a member of the ENI Prize Selection Committee. Since 2014 he has been President of the ESCP Europe Business School at the Turin campus.