The Italian government appointed Roberto Cingolani as CEO of state-controlled defence company Leonardo on 12 April 2023.
Cingolani’s appointment, which must be approved by shareholders, will see him succeed Alessandro Profumo, who is retiring after serving two terms since 2017.
Cingolani started out as a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart from 1988 to 1991. He then became a physics professor at the University of Lecce (now Salento) in the 1990s, a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and then Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States between 1997 and 2000, returning to a professorship at the University of Salento from 2000 to 2005.
From 2005 Cingolani headed the Istituto italiano di tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa before becoming chief technology and innovation officer at Leonardo in 2019. He then embarked on a political career that led to him becoming Minister of Environmental Transition. After the change of Italian government in 2022, Cingolani continued to serve as an energy advisor.
Gerhard Heiming
