When internet (I remember CERN announced it on 1991) and email didn’t exist as we know today, with an opening letter published on 1992 Italian edition of ”Scientific American”, I co-founded “Accademia Epistolare di Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche”, jointly with scientist PhD Dr. Luigi Foschini, today astrophysicist at Italian CNR. That was first time I was so close to the academic and scientific community.
Few year later, Nobel Laureate Prof. Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) invited me to join his team in Université libre de Brussels. Prigogine is best known for his definition of dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, a discovery that won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. A brief but intense period of study that has certainly influenced my future interests and constant search for innovation and challenges.
In 1999, I met Gunter Pauli. He has been active as entrepreneur, lecturer and commentator in culture, science, politics, sustainability and the environment. He built the first ecological factory when CEO of Ecover, that under his leadership became a worldwide acclaimed ecological building, being completed in 1992. In 1994 Pauli initiated the Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI) in Tokyo with the support of Japanese government and United Nations. First time I met Gunter in Geneve at the UN headquarter and we started to work together on a common project for Italian market at which took part also the Italian Province of Pavia supported by Prime Minister office. From this experience – united to the know-how I acquired working with my father Luigi in the family-owned consulting firm – I initiated Ecosquare, a virtual marketplace for characterization of waste & recyclables where the bank of Japan Nomura invested jointly with Italian investors.
From there, I joined a number of other projects as well as with European Environmental Agency in Copenhagen and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Life Cycle Systems group).
Since 2002 until 2007, under invitation of InterAfrican Union for Human Rights of Burkina, a pan- African non-governmental organization working to protect, promote and defends human rights, democracy and development in Africa, I was appointed official delegate at the United Nations headquarter in New York City. Sponsoring and assisting NGO in many projects, I worked closely with founder Halidou Ouedraogo, a long-time human rights advocate and supporter of an independent judicial system in Africa.
