Francesca Rizzo

Francesca is a professor in the Department of Design and Rector’s Delegate for European Projects at Politecnico di Milano. She also currently serves on the Horizon Europe Strategic Committee for the Italian government.

Francesca possesses deep expertise in participatory design, particularly in service design, social innovation, climate-neutral cities, and public-sector transformation. She has been actively engaged in research across numerous EU-funded projects under the Seventh Framework and Horizon 2020 programs, including Peripheria, My Neighborhood, Smart Campus, Life 2.0, Social Innovation Community, SISCODE, EasyRights, and NetZeroCities. She is currently Coordinator of the ORBIS (2023–2026) and Neuroclima (2023–2026) projects under Horizon Europe and serves as Principal Investigator for NetZeroCities.

Francesca holds a PhD in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Florence. She has authored numerous articles and papers for academic journals and conferences.