Robert Saracco, an IEEE senior member devoted to empowering the subsequent technology of digital innovators in Europe, died unexpectedly on 5 December on the age of 70.
He was a key determine within the creation of EIT Digital, a company that invests in analysis and persevering with training to deliver new digital applied sciences to the European market. Saracco additionally taught programs on know-how forecasting and market impression on the University of Trento in Italy.
An lively IEEE volunteer, he chaired the IEEE New Initiatives Committee, which helps potential IEEE providers, merchandise, and different creations that would considerably profit members, the general public, prospects, and the technical group. He was additionally a co-chair of the IEEE Digital Reality initiative, devoted to facilitating disruptive technological improvements and fostering cross-industry collaborations globally whereas taking societal impression into consideration.
Contributions at Telecom Italia and EIT Digital
After receiving a bachelor’s diploma in laptop science and a grasp’s diploma in arithmetic from the University of Turin, in Italy, Saracco started his profession in 1971 on the Telecom Italia Lab, in Rome. There he led community administration analysis and helped design Italy’s first digital change and information community.
Saracco additionally contributed to standardizing the corporate’s telecommunications administration community. Later, he led the group that developed Italy’s first community administration heart.
In 2003 he was promoted to director of long-term analysis on the lab, specializing in know-how’s evolution and its potential impression. Five years later, he modified roles and commenced serving as director of Telecom Italia’s Future Centre, an interactive know-how museum, in Venice.
Saracco left the museum in 2011 to hitch EIT Digital because the president of its Italian department in Trento. He held this place till his loss of life.
In 2017 and 2018 he served as head of EIT’s Industrial Doctoral School, headquartered in Palaiseau, France. The group helps Ph.D. college students from European universities to assist them remodel their analysis into marketable merchandise and options.
From 2015 on, he was additionally a senior lecturer on the University of Trento, the place he taught a grasp class known as “Technology Foresight and Economic Implications of Technology Evolution.” Beginning in 2020 he served on the advisory board of Reply, a global digital know-how consulting agency based mostly in Turin.
IEEE volunteering and authorship
Saracco, an lively volunteer, helped lead teams and initiatives at IEEE, together with the IEEE Technical Committee on Network Operations and Management and IEEE Future Directions, which is chargeable for figuring out and organizing analysis on rising applied sciences throughout the group. He was additionally a member of the IEEE Communications Society board of governors and served as its director of selling.
He authored or coauthored greater than 100 papers and 14 books, together with The Disappearance of Telecommunications, printed in 2000 by IEEE Press. Saracco additionally printed a every day weblog on the IEEE Future Directions web site, the place he mused on the newest technological developments and their impression on humanity.
Tribute from an in depth colleague
Davide De Palma, co-founder of HR Coffee and a colleague of Saracco’s, submitted this in-depth portrait of his shut pal to The Institute.
Remembering Roberto is to immerse oneself in a world the place ardour for know-how shines brightly. Roberto was not simply an professional in his discipline; he was a person who lived every day with a deep and honest love for exploring the unknown. His curiosity was not merely tutorial; it was an emotional journey that took him deeper into the ever-expanding universe of latest applied sciences.
But what actually struck one about Roberto was his immense humanity. He didn’t simply discover the technological world; he delved into the lives of individuals. He was a person who knew methods to hear–really hear. Every dialog with him was a journey, the place phrases weren’t simply sounds, however bridges to a deeper understanding.
Roberto had a novel expertise for recognizing and valuing the very best in every particular person. He was not only a mentor or a instructor. He was an artist of the human soul, able to discerning and illuminating the hidden abilities in every of us. His strategy was by no means superficial. He was within the particulars, these small nuances that usually escape discover, however for him have been the important thing to really understanding individuals and the world round him.
His legacy is not only within the discipline of know-how, but in addition within the numerous lives he touched. Roberto taught many people not simply to be higher professionals, but in addition to be higher human beings. His ardour, his curiosity, and his humanity will proceed to reside within the hearts of these lucky sufficient to have identified him.
In our conversations, Roberto really shined. I vividly bear in mind our lengthy talks about private digital twins, a subject that significantly excited him. His eyes would gentle up as he talked about how these digital counterparts may remodel not simply how we work together with know-how, but in addition how we see and perceive ourselves in an more and more digital world. His imaginative and prescient was deep, able to seeing past the mere technological facet and touching the chords of human essence.
But it was not simply know-how that captured his creativeness. Roberto positioned nice significance on organizational processes and data administration. He believed that know-how, nevertheless superior, may by no means substitute the human worth in decision-making and creativity. For him, information and data have been like golden threads woven into the huge canvas of technological innovation, important for making a extra related and humane future.
And then there was his ardour for coaching data engineers. Roberto was satisfied that the long run belonged to those that not solely understood know-how, but in addition the way it may very well be harmonized with human knowledge. His imaginative and prescient was clear: to coach a brand new technology of engineers who weren’t solely technically competent but in addition deeply conscious of the worth and significance of human data.
Remembering Roberto Saracco is to recollect a person who lived with boundless ardour for know-how, however much more for the humanity it serves. His legacy is not only within the improvements he helped create, however within the lives he touched and the minds he enlightened. His legacy continues to reside in each data engineer he formed, and in each dialog about know-how that transcends the technical to the touch the human. Roberto was not only a pioneer in his discipline, however a real maestro of life, a beacon of knowledge and humanity in an more and more digital world.
Sit tibi terra levis [May the earth rest lightly upon you], Roberto.