Alessandro De Gloria, a Pioneer in Electronic Engineering Applications

This article aims to sketch the figure of Alessandro De Gloria, a professor who dedicated his entire life, with generosity and enthusiasm, to engineering and scientific research. He designed one of the first chips in an Italian university and then a set of digital system architectures that contributed to shaping the then-fledgling field of microprocessors. Also, by founding the Applepies conference (International Conference on Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society), he promoted the intuition of the value for the whole population of the applications of electronic systems. He pioneered the field of mobile apps and started a fruitful dialogue with the humanistic culture, particularly exploiting virtual reality technologies. In the last few years, he also contributed to machine learning and big data, particularly in the domain of automated driving. He founded an MSc program on strategy, intending to shape education in that field from a rigorous engineering point of view. We believe that his generous and enthusiastic academic life can be an outstanding example in the face of today’s challenges of Electronic Engineering and higher education in the broader societal context.