Giampio Bracchi received the Dr. Ing. Degree in engineering in 1967 from Politecnico di Milano. He is currently full professor of Information Systems at Politecnico di Milano, where he has also been serving as Deputy Rector and chairman of the Technology Transfer Unit from 1990 to 2002. Since 2003 he is chairman of the Politecnico Foundation. His professional interests are in the fields of innovation in industry and finance and technology transfer. On these topics he has published books and articles widely, lectured in many countries, conducted research projects in the university environment, been engaged in strategic and management consultancy for large companies, and served as chairman of committees in many private and governmental organisations. He is currently chairman of Banca Intesa Private Banking S.p.A., AIFI-(Italian Association of Private Equity e Venture Capital), RDB S.p.A. (active in building materials), and Milano Serravalle-Milano Tangenziali S.p.A. (active in infrastructures). He is also member of the advisory committee of Borsa Italiana S.p.A. He had served as deputy chairman of Banca Intesa (the main Italian banking group), chairman of “Istituto Scentifico Breda” (a leading centre in industrial research and certification services), member of the board of directors of CDB WebTech, Technostart (active in venture capital), Sorin Biomedica and ABI (Italian Banks Association).

He had also served as advisor to the Italian government, member of the scientific and technical committees of the Italian Ministry of Research and of many research and cultural institutions, member of the boards of directors of INPS (the Italian Social Security institution) and CARIPLO (a leading bank), president of AICA (the Italian National Computing Society), trustee of the Very Large Data Bases Endowment, member of the editorial boards of the journals Information Systems, Information and Management and Decision Support Systems, and chairman of the Technical Committee “Information Systems” of the International Federation for Information Processing.