Education and work experience
Nicola Blefari-Melazzi is a native of Cosenza, in Southern Italy. After his high school degree, top grade cum laude, he was awarded a five-years scholarship to study in Rome at the Collegio Universitario “Lamaro-Pozzani” (http://www.collegiocavalieri.it/en/). The scholarship fully covered tuition and accommodation costs, and was offered by an association of Italian industrialists (Federazione Nazionale dei Cavalieri del Lavoro).
He earned his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering in 1989 from the University of Roma, “La Sapienza”, Italy, magna cum laude and with “dignità di stampa” (literally, “worthy of publication,” an honour given to best theses in Italy). His thesis has been then awarded with two prizes:
- “G. Carosio” prize for the best Italian thesis in Telecommunications, given by University of Roma, “La Sapienza”.
- “G. Oglietti” prize for the best Italian thesis in Telecommunications, given by the Italian association of Electrical, Electronic, Control, Computer Science and Telecommunications Engineering (A.E.I).
Later on, he has been awarded the “A.E.I.” prize for the best paper published by a young author for the paper: “Loss performance analysis of an ATM multiplexer loaded with high speed on-off sources”, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 9, N. 3, April 1991.
He joined the University of Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy, as an Assistant Professor in 1992; the year after he earned his Ph.D. in Information and Communication Engineering. In 1998 he moved to University of Perugia, Italy as an Associate Professor. In 2002 he returned to University of Roma “Tor Vergata” as a Full Professor of Telecommunications.
Administration/Management
From November 2003 to November 2008 he has been the Chair of the PhD program in “Telecommunications and Microelectronic Engineering”, University of Roma Tor Vergata (http://phdelectronics.uniroma2.it/).
From November 2008 to November 2010 he has been the Chair of the undergraduate (“Laurea”) and graduate (“Laurea Magistrale”) programs in Telecommunications Engineering, now renewed and called Internet Engineering, University of Roma Tor Vergata (http://internet.uniroma2.it/en/).
From November 2010 to November 2015 he has been the Chair of the Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Roma Tor Vergata (http://www.eln.uniroma2.it/en/).
From November 2013 to November 2016 he has been a member of the Steering Board of the European Technology Platform “NetWorld2020″ (http://networld2020.eu/), elected among more than 1000 industrial and academic partner organizations.
From November 2013 to November 2016 he has been a member of the board of the 5G Infrastructure Association, the private side of the 5G Public Private Partnership (http://5g-ppp.eu/), a joint initiative between the European ICT sector and the European Commission, whose members fund with a 1.4 Billion Euro budget the R&D for the next generation of communication networks and service.
He is still a member of the 5G Infrastructure Association, now re-named 6G Infrastructure Association (https://6g-ia.eu/), that recently founded the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking together with the European Commission, which will fund with 900 MEUR the research and development for 6G and related technologies. He has been appointed by the Ministry of University and Research as Italian representative in the Member States’ Representatives Group of such Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking.
From November 2016 to November 2017 he has been a member of the board of the master program “Big Data in Business”, with responsibility on one of its four main themes: “Networking” (http://bigdata.uniroma2.it/).
From January 2017 to January 2023 he has been the Director of CNIT (National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications, http://www.cnit.it/), a non-profit Consortium among 41 Italian Universities, including also 8 research units belonging to institutes of the National Research Council (CNR). CNIT also operates seven national laboratories. More than 1,300 people, belonging to the participating universities, collaborate with CNIT, while the number of employees is more than 100. CNIT revenues (about 18M€ per year, increasing significantly in the last years) come from private companies and competitive funding programs. CNIT has participated in 61 H2020 projects and coordinated 15 of them. Since January 2023 he is the President of CNIT.
Since October 2017 he is a member of the Data Protection Supervisory Authority of the European Space Agency.
In 2018 he conceived and chaired 5G Italy (https://www.5gitaly.eu/), a three-day event in Rome where politics, regulatory authorities, research, businesses, economy and public administrations met, addressing the challenges and opportunities of the upcoming 5G network. The conference also included an international PhD School (https://www.5gitaly.eu/phd-school/) on 5G issues and produced a white book (https://www.5gitaly.eu/white-ebook). The event took place also in 2019 and 2020, becoming the Italian reference conference in the sector.
In June 2019 he run for Rector of the University of Rome Tor Vergata; the elections have been won by Prof. Schillaci. His program is available here; a presentation is available here and a complete version of the presentation here.
Since September 2022, he is the President of the RESTART Foundation, established primarily for the implementation, coordination and management of the 116 M€ MUR-funded research program “Telecommunications of the Future”.
Research projects and coordination of projects
Dr. Blefari-Melazzi has been the coordinator for the following European projects. The total cost of these projects is about 41 M€:
- SIMPLICITY (http://ict-simplicity.eu/)
- SMS (http://sms.netgroup.uniroma2.it/)
- CONVERGENCE (http://www.ict-convergence.eu)
- BONVOYAGE (http://bonvoyage2020.eu/)
- SUPERFLUIDITY (http://superfluidity.eu/, ranked first over 80 project proposals in the call ICT, 5G
- FeD4IoT (https://fed4iot.org/), ranked first
- LOCUS (https://www.locus-project.eu/)
- I-NEST (https://i-nest.cnit.it/)
He has been the coordinator of his university’s activity for the following projects: 4th Framework Programme: ASSET; 5th: FIFTH, ICEBERGS, SUITED; 6th: SATNEX, SATNEX II, E2R II; 7th: MOMENT, OFELIA (ranked first among 21 other proposals), GREENICN, OPENLAB; H2020: ICN2020, 5G-EVE.
He also participated to other 12 European projects (INSIGNIA, MEDIAN, SECOMS, AQUILA, ELISA, and WHYLESS.COM, EuQoS, DISCREET, PRISM, GREENICN, CONFINE, GN3plus and 5G PICTURE), for a total of 32 of them.
He has been the coordinator of his university’s activity for several projects funded by the European Space Agency, by the Italian Public Education Ministry, by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and by major companies (e.g., Alenia Spazio, Ericsson, Siemens, Telecom Italia, Telespazio).
He has been an evaluator for many research proposals.
Teaching and research
Dr. Blefari Melazzi has taught at the universities of Roma Sapienza, L’Aquila, Perugia, Roma Tor Vergata. He has also taught specialist courses at Scuola Superiore Guglielmo Reiss Romoli, Scuola delle Trasmissioni dell’Esercito Italiano, Istituto Internazionale per gli Alti Studi Scientifici, Ordine degli Ingegneri di Roma and several companies.
Dr. Blefari-Melazzi served as session chair, member of the Technical Program Committee, TPC chair and general chair for IEEE Conferences and as editor for IEEE and Elsevier Journals. He organized many workshops e.g. on Quality of Service in the Internet, UWB, 4G and 5G issues.
Dr. Blefari-Melazzi has promoted the research carried out by his group by visiting and by giving invited talks to several research Institutes, including AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel and Murray Hill, NEC Laboratories in Princeton, the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, USA, the University of Calcutta, India, the Seoul National University, the Korea University, the LG Electronics Laboratories Seoul, Korea, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, the Northeastern University, Boston.
His research interests include the performance evaluation, design and control of broadband integrated networks, wireless LANs, satellite networks and of the Internet. He also worked on multimedia traffic modelling, mobile and personal communications, quality of service in the Internet, ubiquitous computing, reconfigurable systems and networks, service personalization, autonomic computing, SDN/NFV, ICT solutions for Intelligent Transport Systems.
He is author/co-author of about 260 papers published in peer-reviewed, international journals and conference proceedings. He is also the co-author of book chapters on Quality of Service issues in the Internet and on Ambient Intelligence and of a handbook, in Italian, on the TCP/IP protocol suite: “Internet: Architettura, Principali Protocolli e Linee Evolutive”, McGraw-Hill, 2005 (http://www.ateneonline.it/blefari_melazzi/).