Prof. Sergio Saponara is Full Professor of Electronic Engineering at University of Pisa.
He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and he got the Master Degree cum Laude and the PhD degree, both in Electronic Engineering, from University of Pisa.
In 1999 he had a research contract with the CSMDR-CNR (“Centro Studi Metodi e Dispositivi di Radiotrasmissioni” of the Italian National Research Council). From 2000 to 2002 he received a research grant from STMicroelectronics. In 2002 he was a Marie Curie Research fellow at the Inter-university-Microelectronics Center (IMEC), Leuven, Belgium.
At University of Pisa he is the teaching responsible of the courses of “Vehicular Electronics”, “Electronic Systems for Automation and Robotics”, “Electronic Wireless Systems”, “Electronics Manufacturing” for the Master degree in Vehicle Engineering, Master degree in Robotics and Automation Engineering, and for the Bachelor and the Master degrees in Electronic Engineering.
He also teaches the courses of “Electronics” and of “Fundamentals of Electronics for Telecommunications” at the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno for the Bachelor degree in Maritime and Naval Science.
In the past he held also teaching activities in the courses Embedded Systems, Architectures of Electronic Systems, Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits, Autronics and Mechatronics, Programmable Electronic Systems for the Master degrees in Vehicle Engineering, Electronic Engineering, and in Automation Engineering, and for the Bachelor degree in Electronic Engineering at Pisa University.
He is also the promoter and scientific director of the Summer School of the University of Pisa “Enabling technologies for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT)”, awarded by IEEE CAS society, that is now at its 4 edition, involving lecturers from Universities of Pisa, Kiel, Moscow, Grenoble, Pavia, Modena and Reggio Emilia, and from industry (INTEL, STMicroelectronics, Keysight, Anritsu, LFoundry, Arrow, Linear Technology, PPC, Cubit, IDS).
He is a member of the scientific council of UCAR: interUniversity Center of Automotive Research, involving Universities of Pisa, Florence and G. Marconi in Rome and of MOVET (association of private companies and public institutions).
He was a member of the managing committee of the Engineering PhD School “Leonardo da Vinci” at Pisa University and now of the PhD School in ICT Engineering, still at Pisa University.
He held also lectures for Summer Schools, PhD programs, for the Pianeta Galileo and TRIO e-learning programs of Tuscany Region, for international companies such as Magna Closures, ABB-Power One and Pierburg.
He held invited talks, round tables and tutorial at international IEEE and SPIE conferences (Eusipco 2006, IEEE Radarcon 2012, SPIE RTIVP 2013, IEEE WISP 2015, SPIE Photonics Europe 2016, IEEE I2MTC2017, IEEE TV Channel, FORITAAL2017, IEEE NGCAS2017, IEEE ISCAS2018).
His research interests include integrated electronics, wireless systems, smart sensors and actuators, embedded & HPC digital signal processors, new instrumentation and measurement systems.
Application domains are vehicles and intelligent transports, on-board space electronics, mechatronics and energy management, wearable and/or wireless sensing for IoT.
He is responsible of the Crosslab on Industrial Internet of Things at University of Pisa.
He is VicePresident of the Bachelor and Master Degree Programs in Electronic Engineering.
He is the Editor of the IEEE CAS book “Enabling technologies for IoT” and of the ARTECH book “Highly integrated and low-power radars”.
He co-authored about 300 international scientific publications (of which about 250 indexed in Scopus and/or ISI WoS data base and 20 patents, see http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6724-4219)
The H-index is 24 in Scopus/ISI WoS and 27 in Google Scholar.
He has been the founder of the Special Interest Group in IoT of the IEEE SP society and of the IEEE CAS society.
He is member of 3 IEEE standardization activities, of 3 Technical Committees (TC-7, TC-19 and TC-41) of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society and of the Technical Committee on VLSI of the IEEE Computer Society.
He is member of the World Forum on IoT. He is an IEEE Senior Member and he is a member of organizing committee of the IEEE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF IMAGING (I2SI).
He served in the organization of more than 140 international conferences, most from IEEE and SPIE and as guest editor of special issues in several ISI journals. He served as member of the reviewing board of more than 70 journals from IEEE, IET, Elsevier and Springer. He held plenary/invited talks and tutorials at IEEE and SPIE conferences.
He is also Associate Editor and/or Guest Editor of 13 international peer-reviewed journals:
Associate Editor of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, IEEE Canadian Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering, Journal of Real-Time Image Processing from SpringerNature, the Electronics Letters from IEE/IEEE, the journal Energies from MDPI, the journal Designs from MDPI, the Journal of Wireless Communications from SISPRESS; Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, of the journal on Embedded Systems from SpringerNature, and of the journal of Computer Networks and Communications from Hindawi, of the journal Sensors from MDPI, of the journal Applied Science from MDPI.
He got best paper awards at PRIME 2007, StreamingDay2010, GE2007 and the 2nd prize at the Element-14 Medical design award 2011, best session presentation award at IEEE IECON 2016. An abstract of his PhD thesis was awarded at the 1st EDAA PhD forum in Munich, 2003, and he received the “premio giovane ricercatore” from the Senato Accademico-University of Pisa in 2011.
He got also the “Outstanding Reviewer Award” from Elsevier in 2015. In the VQR 2004-2010 and in VQR 2011-2014 all his 5 submitted scientific works have been evaluated with the grade “excellent”.
His technology transfer activity includes collaborations with STMicroelectronics, Renesas, Selex, Ericsson, Piaggio, Magna Closure, AustriaMicroSystems, CAEN, Sitael, Intecs, Rico, Flyby, CarbonDream.
He is co-founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of Ingeniars srl a spin-off company of the University of Pisa, which has been in the top 10 Tuscany start-up companies awarded at the StartCup2014 competition and has been awarded in Horizon 2020 within the SME Instruments program.
He is a reviewer of the MIUR, of the EU commission, of the Kazakhstan and Cyprus Governments, of Piedmont, Puglia and Trentino Regions.
He served/is serving as project manager and/or WP manager in several national and international research projects (PRIN, FIRB, POR-CREO, ESA, INFN, FP6, FP7, H2020).
He is associate member of the Italian National Institutes for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and of the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) and for Informatics (CINI).
He served as PhD reviewer and member of PhD commitees for PhD programs in Finland and India and in Italy (University of Pisa, Politecnico di Torino, University of L’Aquila).
He served as a committee member of evaluation commissions for enrollment of a researcher (RTDA) and a technician at University of Pisa, a researcher (RTDA) at University E-CAMPUS, 3 associate professors at University of Trieste and Genova, 1 full professor at Politecnico di Torino.
He is the general chair of the Springer Conference Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry Environment and Society.
He is the 2018-2020 coordinator of the Electronic Systems area of the SIE (Italian Association for Electronics)
He joined the NEWCOM and HIPEAC European networks of excellence.