Webinar: Back Home. How Global Crisis Will Change the Places Where We Live

With the support of the Embassy of Italy in Cyprus, as part of the Enrico Fermi Lecture Series

Nature’s Voice: Switching From Quantity to Quality in the Post-Pandemic Society

Monday, 26 April 2021, 16:30 - 19:00

The event will be addressed by H.E. Dr Andrea Cavallari, Ambassador of Italy in Cyprus, and Prof George Christophides, President of The Cyprus Institute.
The lecture will be introduced by Dr Fabio Maria Montagnino, Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The Cyprus Institute

Abstract

Facing the ecological crisis and in the aftermath of the pandemic, new ideas and values have appeared on the horizon. Once the curtain rises on tomorrow, what will be the dominant scene that features reason and narrative as protagonists? Will we hopefully see a social and economic landscape utterly different from the past? Science and industry are leading players in connecting the natural world and the human world, and this lecture explores new approaches where researchers and innovators can inspire themselves from Nature, while exploring new models of development. By switching from the dominant quantitative to the needed qualitative paradigm, our societies will be both more empathetic and sustainable.

Keynote Speaker

Prof. Piero Formica

Piero Formica started his career at the OECD Economic Prospects Division in Paris. He is the International Entrepreneurship Academy Founder and was a Professor of Economics at the Jönköping University in Sweden. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Innovation Value Institute of the Maynooth University in Ireland.

At the ESAM, a business school in Paris, and at the C_LAB (Universities of Padua), Piero Formica, in the role of professor and mentor, conducts experiments to ideate innovative projects by students who attend the Lab.

Professor Formica received several honours that include the Innovation Luminary Award 2017 from the Open Innovation Science and Policy Group under the aegis of the European Union. He has been appointed International Professor (Marie Curie project) at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, International Professor of Knowledge Economics and Entrepreneurship at the Higher Colleges of Technology, United Arab Emirates, and Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Guest Professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, and Professor of the Economics of Innovation in the Master programmes ‘Business Law’ and ‘Technology Management’ – University of Bologna.

Professor Formica serves on the Editorial Boards of Industry and Higher Education; the International Journal of the Knowledge Economy; the International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development; the Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research; the South Asian Journal of Management.

His most recent published works include Parole e Voci dell’Innovazione: Per una Cultura del Cambiamento, il Mulino, 2019; Innovation and the Arts: The Value of Humanities Studies for Business, Emerald Publishing Group, 2020; Econaissance: The Reimagined School and the Culture of Entrepreneurialism, Emerald Publishing Group, 2020; Nature's Voice: Health and Humanities, bioGraph, Chicago.

Panelists

Alessandro Bianciardi
Dr. Alessandro Bianciardi is an environmental engineer with more than 25 years of experience in identification and management of environment and sustainable development projects at international level. He worked for and within international organizations such as UNDP and the European Commission as well as for NGOs and consulting companies. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (on Biologically-Inspired Design approach for the industry) from the Politecnico di Milano; a Master in Biomimicry from the Arizona State University and has a certification for Education for Sustainability at the Schumacher College (UK).

In 2013 he co-founded Planet s.a.s, a start-up fully dedicated to bio-inspired innovation and in particular he developed bio-inspired solar desalination technology for land regeneration, bio-inspired anti-bacterial surfaces and bio-inspired filtration systems. He conducted public speeches on bio-inpiration and seminars and workshops on biologically-inspired design methods for sustainable innovation at Universities and International Conferences. He also co-founded Biomimicry Italia, network affiliated with the Biomimicry Institute (USA), with the aim of promoting biomimicry in Italy.
 

Salvatore Carlucci
Salvatore Carlucci is a tenured Full Professor at the Energy, Environment and Water Research Center of The Cyprus Institute. He is the Head of the Sustainable Built Environment Group. Dr. Carlucci received M.Sc. (2006) and Ph.D. (2012) degrees, both with honours from Politecnico di Milano in Italy. Currently, he is subtask leader of IEA-EBC Annex 79 on "Occupant-centric building design and operation" and is a fellow of the International Building Performance Simulation Association. He is a member of the editorial board of two peer-reviewed scientific journals, Springer Nature’s Energy Efficiency and MDPI’s Energies, an evaluator for some international universities and research foundations, and a reviewer for numerous international journals. He has contributed to several projects funded by the European Union, belonging to the Intelligent Energy Europe program, the Seventh framework program, the Horizon 2020 program, and three Annexes approved by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Dr. Carlucci has published about 60 scientific papers and contributed to seven books on occupant-centric building design and operation, indoor environmental quality (thermal, visual and acoustic comfort, and indoor air quality), sustainable, smart and low-energy buildings, building performance simulation and optimisation, and building physics.
 

Fabio Maria Montagnino
Fabio Maria Montagnino is the Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The Cyprus Institute. After a degree cum laude in physics and a fellowship in experimental and computational biophysics at the University of Palermo and the Italian National Research Council, he moved to the industrial sector, where he managed both R&D and internationalization processes.

For the last twenty years, he's been promoting open innovation models through the generation of knowledge-based start-ups, technology scouting and knowledge transfer actions. In 2003 he founded the innovation hub Consorzio ARCA, which he’s been leading for fifteen years, pursuing its strong internationalization within the EU innovation ecosystem, as regional node of the EEN service network, EU-BIC certified incubator, EIT Health RIS Hub and host two EU recognised Living Labs. He directly established two incubators, and contributed to the implementation of many hard and soft infrastructures for innovation, as well as to the transfer of approaches and methodologies to EU partner countries in the Mediterranean area.

He has been involved in more than 30 research and innovation projects and clustering actions, holding the role of coordinator in many of those. In the last decade, his interest has been focused on the holistic combination of creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation, towards the sustainable development perspective. Member of technical and representative boards and committees at national and European level, he's regularly invited as a lecturer and key speaker about innovation, sustainability and knowledge economy, both in national and international courses, conferences and events. He's the author of 3 patents. 

Valentina Vassallo
Valentina has a Masters degree in Conservation and Management of Cultural Heritage 2004-2005, 1’ Specialized School of Interactive Graphics 2005, Degree of Conservation of Cultural Heritage 2002. She was formerly a Fellowship Researcher at the Institute of Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage (CNR)-Rome 2009, Teaching in III and IV Training Course of High Formation in “Digital Integrated Technologies applied to Cultural Heritage: from the data field acquisition to the communication through Virtual Reality systems” 2009.

Theodoros Zachariades
Theodoros Zachariadis is a tenured Associate Professor at the Energy, Environment and Water Research Centre of the Cyprus Institute. In 2009-2020 he served as an Assistant and then Associate Professor of environmental policy and energy resource management at the Cyprus University of Technology. In 2015-2020 he was the Dean of the University's Faculty of Geotechnical Sciences and Environmental Management. He holds a Diploma and a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His postdoctoral work focused on the economic analysis of energy and environmental issues.

He has worked as a researcher at the National Technical University of Athens and as a European Marie Curie Fellow at the Economics Research Centre of the University of Cyprus. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency, a Visiting Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, a Manager at the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network European Union (SDSN EU) and an associate editor of the international Journal "Energy Economics". He is also a member of the Leadership Council of SDSN Cyprus and served as a Board member of Green Budget Europe, a Brussels-based expert platform promoting environmental fiscal reforms. He is the recipient of the 2009 Research Prize of the Republic of Cyprus and the 2019 Environmental Prize awarded by the President of the Republic of Cyprus. His research interests are on the techno-economic analysis of energy, environmental and transport policies, with a special interest in environmental taxation.
  

Programme

About the Event

This event is part of the Enrico Fermi Lecture series, which is co-organised by the Embassy of Italy in Nicosia and The Cyprus Institute. Since 2017, this series of prestigious talks has brought to Cypriot audiences the work of eminent Italian scientists, such as Prof. Massimo Inguscio (President of CNR), Prof. Ettore Fiorini (Emeritus Professor at the University di Milano-Bicocca and National Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), Prof. Antonio Sgamellotti (Università di Perugia, Accademia dei Lincei), and Prof. Federico M. Butera (Professor Emeritus at Politecnico di Milano). This year, the Lecture is also aimed at celebrating the day of Italian Research in the World

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