SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHIES

Francesco Gennaro, Ph.D., graduated in 1996 in Electrical Engineering and pursued the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2000 at the University of Catania.  In 1999 joined the University of Wisconsin, Madison (WI), USA as Visiting Scholar and worked as New Product Development Engineer at “Soft Switching Technologies Corporation”, Madison (WI), USA  After one year as Associate Researcher at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Catania, joined STMicroelectronics as Senior Application Engineer for High Voltage Smart Power ICs.  Currently he is “Power Converters Team” Manager inside “Systems Lab & Technical Marketing”, the Application Laboratory of Industrial and Multisegment Sector of STMicroelecronics, developing system solutions in several application fields, mainly in renewable energy applications.  He his author of more than 30 scientific and technical papers on power converters and holds 4 international patents on power converters.

Gianluca Gigliucci joined Enel Research Department in 2001. His activities focused on innovative systems and energy conversion technologies within the national and international energy scenarios. Main research topics dealt with include renewable energy power plants, distributed generation, hydrogen production, storage and use, energy storage systems, CO2 capture. Currently he leads the Renewable Energies and Distributed Generation group, which includes Enel Solar Lab facilities in Catania, Sicily and which carry out the activities on energy storage coupling with unpredictable renewable energy generation plants and on zero emission buildings. He is member of IEA Task VIII “Very Large Scale Photo-Voltaic Power Systems” and coordinates the Italian Government-founded project SCOOP “Solar Concentration Technologies for Photovoltaic Systems”.

Salvatore Lombardo received a B.S. (cum laude) and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Catania, Italy, in 1989 and in 1994, respectively. He joined the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in1994 and from 2001 he is Senior Scientist of CNR at the IMM Institute. He has spent various periods as visiting scientist at Cornell University, IBM-Research, and STMicroelectronics. His research interests are in the field of semiconductor devices and electronic materials. Dr. Lombardo is committee member and served as chair of numerous international workshops and conferences. He was involved in the coordination of several R&D national and European projects and of scientific collaborations with USA, Singapore, and Israel institutions. He is author of 7 patents, 5 review articles, and of about 200 scientific and technical papers published on international journals.

Lars Bomholt is a technologist in the Silicon Engineering Group of Synopsys. His interests are technology modeling, technology computer aided design (TCAD), as well as computer aided manufacturing technologies. The current focus is on semiconductors, electronics and nanotechnology. He holds a PhD in technical sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.