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 corporation that invests in analysis and persevering with schooling to deliver new digital applied sciences to the European market. Saracco additionally taught programs on expertise forecasting and market impression on the College of Trento in Italy.
An lively IEEE volunteer, he chaired the IEEE New Initiatives Committee, which helps potential IEEE companies, merchandise, and different creations that might considerably profit members, the general public, prospects, and the technical neighborhood. He was additionally a co-chair of the IEEE Digital Actuality 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 pc science and a grasp’s diploma in arithmetic from the College 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 alternate and information community.
Saracco additionally contributed to standardizing the corporate’s telecommunications administration community. Later, he led the workforce that developed Italy’s first community administration heart.
In 2003 he was promoted to director of long-term analysis on the lab, specializing in expertise’s evolution and its potential impression. 5 years later, he modified roles and started serving as director of Telecom Italia’s Future Centre, an interactive expertise museum, in Venice.
Saracco left the museum in 2011 to affix EIT Digital because the president of its Italian department in Trento. He held this place till his demise.
In 2017 and 2018 he served as head of EIT’s Industrial Doctoral College, 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 College of Trento, the place he taught a grasp class referred to as “Expertise Foresight and Financial Implications of Expertise Evolution.” Starting in 2020 he served on the advisory board of Reply, a world digital expertise 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 Community Operations and Administration and IEEE Future Instructions, which is liable 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 promoting.
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 each day weblog on the IEEE Future Instructions web site, the place he mused on the most recent technological developments and their impression on humanity.
Tribute from an in depth colleague
Davide De Palma, co-founder of HR Espresso 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 expertise 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 educational; it was an emotional journey that took him deeper into the ever-expanding universe of recent applied sciences.
However 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. Each 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 perfect in every individual. 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 had been the important thing to actually understanding individuals and the world round him.
His legacy isn’t just within the discipline of expertise, 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 stay within the hearts of these lucky sufficient to have identified him.
In our conversations, Roberto really shined. I vividly keep 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 expertise, 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 surely was not simply expertise that captured his creativeness. Roberto positioned nice significance on organizational processes and information administration. He believed that expertise, nonetheless superior, may by no means substitute the human worth in decision-making and creativity. For him, information and information had been like golden threads woven into the huge canvas of technological innovation, important for making a extra linked and humane future.
After which there was his ardour for coaching information engineers. Roberto was satisfied that the longer term belonged to those that not solely understood expertise, 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 information.
Remembering Roberto Saracco is to recollect a person who lived with boundless ardour for expertise, however much more for the humanity it serves. His legacy isn’t just within the improvements he helped create, however within the lives he touched and the minds he enlightened. His legacy continues to stay in each information engineer he formed, and in each dialog about expertise 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.
