Register to attend this lecture in person at the foot of this page. Alternatively, access live on Zoom via the link at the end of the description.
This lecture will shed light on the "new Space Economy", a new frame of reference for space in which private companies become more and more influential.
Related questions include:
- What benefits are there in exploring and utilizing Space?
- Are these becoming more strategic for Italy and the world?
- What about the risk of space debris?
- What to make of a possible use of Starlink in Europe?
Ezio Bussoletti is Chairman of e-GEOS, a leading international player in the Earth Observation (EO) and Geo-Spatial Information business.
Bussoletti graduated cum laude in Space Physics from La Sapienza University. He specialised in Paris during the two and a half years he spent there on an ESRO-Postdoctoral grant, also obtaining the Doctorat d’Etat ès Sciences, with distinction, again in Space Physics, in 1973. On his return to Italy, he was appointed to the University of Lecce in late 1973, quickly rising through the ranks to Associate Professor in 1983, and then at the Istituto Universitario Navale (Parthenope University since 2000) in Naples, where he obtained the Chair in Space Astrophysics in November 1986.
In Lecce, he established the first Italian Cosmic Physics Laboratory specialised in the study of cosmic material both by means of instruments placed aboard Space probes and in the laboratory. Here, he was involved in the development of an experiment mounted on the ESA’s Giotto probe that encountered Halley’s Comet on 13 March 1986. In Naples, he set up a new laboratory that was enlarged by the arrival of qualified young scientists, enabling participation in several NASA missions, including the great success achieved with the implementation of an instrument that flew in the ESA’s Rosetta mission: a probe that landed on the nucleus of a comet.
Ezio Bussoletti, who has served on the CNR’s National Space Plan since 1975, was involved in the design and creation of ASI in 1988 and has shared institutional responsibilities in the Scientific and Technological Committees, joining the Board of Directors in 2009 as Vice President, appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Alongside his research activities, since 1983 he has been intensively active in both the Space and the Environment sectors, called upon by the European Commission as Advisor to DG Industry and JRC (1994-1999). He coordinated the WG “High Level Group of Space Industries in Europe” and then drafted the European Space Plan for Commissioner E. Cresson, presented in 1996 under the title “The European Union and Space: fostering applications, markets and industrial competitiveness” (COM(96) 617 final, 04.12.1996).
He has been a member of several national and international technical and scientific committees (ISTAG, IPTS-JCR, ESA, IPHE, ANPA-APAT, ICRAM). He has been Head of the Italian Delegation and Chairman of the Security Committee in GMES (later to become COPERNICUS) since its establishment, and co-founder, in 2003, alongside the US delegations and the most important European countries of GEO, the Intergovernmental EO Group until 2014. He held a similar role in UN-GGIM (United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management) from its foundation in 2011 through to 2022. As Space Advisor to the pro-tempore Minister of the Environment, he attended G8 meetings (2004-2005, 2009).
At a national level he has been a member of all the Committees concerning the activities and governance of the Space Sector, including those of territorial and environmental relevance (CNR, MUR-MIUR; Ministry of the Environment, Council Presidency, MAECI). In the last 10 years he has mainly dealt with the Environment and Territory as a member of the VIA-VAS and COVIS Commissions.
In 2011, as Vice President of ASI, he had already been involved in the drafting of the Programmatic “Government Guidelines for Italian Space and Aerospace”, a role he continued to hold from 2018 to 2023 as Space Advisor initially to MIT and then to the Ministry of the Environment, also attending COMINT meetings. Ezio Bussoletti was also Scientific Counselor of the Italian Representation in UNESCO from 2004 to 2007, dealing with the themes of Environment and Scientific Research. Since 2023, he has developed and directed the first Italian “Space Economy” Master at the Luiss Business School in Rome.
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