2007-present: Founder and president of Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Research Institute www.svairi.com

2008-present: Chair of the Leonardo events held at Stanford, UC Berkeley and University of San Francisco www.lasertalks.com

2003-2006: Independent Consultant.

Helping USA and European start-ups develop consulting organizations, offsource projects and analyze strategic goals

1998-2003: Senior Architect, INTELLICORP, Mountain View (CA)

Consultant and architect for the design and implementation of SAP-based eCommerce/CRM solutions for large multinational businesses with emphasis on configurable products. Designed customized, integrated Java-based architectures and webservices on Unix and Windows platforms involving software from SAP, Siebel, SUN, Microsoft, Linux, etc. All of them were centered around an A.I.-based configurator and interacted with an SAP backend. Developed the company-wide object-oriented methodology (based on UML). Also implemented SAP R/3 product modeling.

1995-1998: President, OMNIWARE, Redwood City (CA)

Consultant for several international corporations in the areas of artificial intelligence, object-oriented analysis and e-commerce. Designed e-commerce solutions for very large businesses in both Europe and the US. Designed a proprietary search engine.

1993-1995: Principal Advisor for Corporate Software Strategies, Olivetti , Cupertino (CA)

In charge of evaluating new software technologies and of outlining corporate strategies, reporting to the executive VP for Corporate Strategies. Investigating start-up companies and new products for either direct investment by Olivetti or inclusion in Olivetti's product offering. Outlining integration and porting paths and direct intervention by the appropriate product divisions at the company's headquarters. Responsible for technological roadmaps on Multimedia, Databases, Development Tools and Artificial Intelligence. Supervised design of Olivetti's proprietary object model. Intense involvement in product definition for groupware (application/data sharing), multimedia (videoconferencing), Internet, compound documents (OLE 2.0, OpenDoc and Taligent), development tools (visual programming, client/server computing, object-oriented methodologies).

Representing Olivetti in a variety of standard committees and consortia. List of committees available upon request.

Olivetti contact for Microsoft, Taligent and IBM.

1990-1992: Senior Manager, Olivetti Scientific Center (CA and Italy)

Established the Olivetti Scientific Center, with operations in California and Southern Italy. Research projects included several pilot multimedia applications, object-oriented environments, research on knowledge-based systems and neural networks. Staff of 62 engineers. See old articles about his AI Center.

1985-1990: Manager, Olivetti Artificial Intelligence Center (California and Italy)

Established the Olivetti Artificial Intelligence Center, with operations in Italy and California. Manager of both sites, reporting directly to the vice-president of R&D. Helped shape the center as the company's technological bridge to the international research community (started cooperative research programmes between Olivetti and universities worldwide). Helped Mktg & Sales in promoting and marketing A.I. products. Helped Product Planning and Customer Support departments set up their operations. Dealt directly with Olivetti's large accounts to develop pilot applications.

Projects (mostly implemented in either C++ or Smalltalk) included:

• a PC-based implementation of Smalltalk, jointly with Digitalk (1984-85);
• a proprietary expert system shell (1985-90);
• an Intelligent Decision Support system, jointly with Stanford Univ (1985-86);
• a Fault Detection and Recovery expert system, jointly with SRI Intl (1985-86);
• a Natural Language Processing System, jointly with CalTech (1986-89);
• an Expert System for PC-board troubleshooting, for internal use (1987);
• a Text Processing System for Document Dispatching, for internal use (1987-90);
• an Expert System for Terminal Tele-diagnosis, for internal use (1988-90);
• an Expert System for Software Configuration, for internal use (1988-90);

1982-1984: Senior Software Engineer, Olivetti, California and Italy (user interfaces, operating systems, e-mail system)

1977-1982: Software Consultant, SofTec, Italy (consulting jobs in several European countries, ranging from databases to communications)

1974: Computer Science diploma with honors from the Peano Institute of Turin, Italy. G.P.A. 60 of 60.

1980: Graduated in Mathematics "summa cum laude" from University of Turin, Italy. G.P.A. 110 of 110.

1984: Visiting scholar, Harvard University (research topic: Artificial Intelligence)

1995: Visiting scholar, Stanford University (research topic: Artificial Intelligence)

Born in Italy, holding dual European and US citizenship.

Fluent Italian and English, working Spanish and German.

Lecturing since 1998 at U.C. Berkeley on "Theories of Mind".

Most recent publication: "Thinking about Thought" (2003), a survey of theories of mind (available through major retailers).

Author of four books on Artificial Intelligence (latest: "Thinking About Thought", 2003)

Member of the board of directors of Leonardo, an MIT Press publication

Published more than one hundred articles in newspapers and computer magazines.

Lectures and invited talks since 1980 in several European, South American and U.S. institutions, including Stanford Univ and U.C. Berkeley.

Held many industrial seminars at major corporations.

List of publications, talks and research projects available upon request.