Prior to his appointment as Minister for the Ecological Transition of Italy, Roberto Cingolani was the Chief Technology & Innovation Officer of Leonardo, the Italian multinational company specialized in Aerospace, Defense and Security from September 2019 to February 2021. From its foundation in 2005 till 2019, he was Scientific Director of Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia – IIT (Italian Institute of Technology Foundation), an internationally acknowledged research centre. He launched the interdisciplinary program “Humanoid Technologies” based on the idea that the technological imitation of nature and its processes may provide solutions to improve the quality of human life.

Cingolani is author and co-author of more than 1100 papers on international journals and holds more than 100 patents in the fields of Materials Science, Semiconductor Technologies, Nanotechnologies, Chemistry of Materials, Sensor Technologies, Optoelectronics and Photonics, Robotics. He has served as technical advisor in different panels for the Ministry of Research and University, including the Commission for the Selection of Centres of Excellence and the panel of experts for the drawing up of the National Research Plan, as well as for the European Commission, especially in the field of Nanotechnologies, New Materials, and New Production Systems.

He has received many national and international awards, including the honorific title of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic of “Commendatore della Repubblica” from the President of the Italian Republic.