Rocco De Nicola

Rocco De Nicola, Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, is a professor of Computer Science and the Rector of the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. He has worked for Olivetti, Italtel, the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa, Sapienza Università di Roma, and Università di Firenze. He has been a visiting professor at Technische Universität Berlin, École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, and Ludwig Maximilian University Muenchen. He has also been a visiting researcher at the Microsoft Research Center in Cambridge, UK.
De Nicola is a member of Academia Europaea and a fellow of EATCS, the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. In 2005, he was appointed ‘Commendatore della Repubblica’ (Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic) by the President of the Republic of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Rector of the IMT School since November 1, 2021, De Nicola has also served as a member of the School's Academic Senate and Board of Governors. Since May 10, 2024, he is the President of Gruppo 2003, an association that brings together 120 Italian scientists at the top of the world rankings in the scientific literature according to the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers List.
Currently, De Nicola is also the deputy director of the CINI National Laboratory for Cybersecurity, the director of the Cybersecurity Competence Center of Tuscany (C3T), and the Coordinator of the National Ph.D. Program in Cybersecurity.
De Nicola specializes in the fundamentals of distributed computing, formal specifications and proof of properties of distributed systems, and cybersecurity. He is the author of more than 250 publications in international journals and other volumes. During his academic career, De Nicola has been a member of several advisory boards of international research institutions and has served as principal investigator for numerous research projects funded by the EU, MUR, CNR, Tuscany Region, and private companies. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming (Elsevier), associate editor of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science (Cambridge University Press), Computer Science (Springer Nature), and Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (Elsevier).