Matteo Pardo (Genoa, 1971) has been the Secretary General of itatec, the Italian Academy of Engineering and Technology, since 2023, and a member of the Executive Council of Euro-CASE (European Council of Academies of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering) since 2025. His professional career is divided into two main phases: scientific research (until 2011) and a subsequent institutional path in science policy and international relations.
After graduating cum laude in Physics from the University of Milan in 1996, he obtained his PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Brescia in 1999. Until 2008, his research activity focused on the intersection of machine learning and chemical sensing at the SENSOR Lab in Brescia—first as a researcher at the National Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM) and later at the National Research Council (CNR). During this period, he led the group developing an artificial olfactory system, also known as an electronic nose, and introduced the use of machine learning techniques—such as Support Vector Machines, boosting, and random forests—into the analysis of chemical sensor data. For these contributions, he received the Wolfgang Goepel Memorial Award (2003) and was appointed to the Steering Committee of the International Society for Olfaction and Chemical Sensing. He also held regular stints as a visiting researcher, including at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Warwick. From 2008 to 2010, he worked on bioinformatics at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin with a Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship.
In 2011, he shifted his focus toward international cooperation and science policy, serving until 2019 as the Science Attaché at the Italian Embassy in Berlin. In this role, he managed key dossiers, including trilateral (Italy-France-Germany) cooperation on Industry 4.0 and Italian representation on the Council of the ESO (European Southern Observatory), contributing to the approval of the Extremely Large Telescope project. Moreover, he promoted the creation of an core group among major research institutions (CNR, IIT, INFN, PoliTO), which joined Euro-CASE in 2017. This effort subsequently led to the founding of itatec in 2022 at the Accademia dei Lincei, where he was one of the ten founding signatories. As Secretary General of the Academy, he manages its strategic direction, the annual co-optation process for new academicians, thematic working groups, and relations with European and national policymakers.
In parallel, he works within the CNR Office for International Relations, where he is responsible for European bilateral relations, with a particular focus on Germany. In this capacity, he handles the negotiation of MoUs with foreign research centers—including the German DFKI and the Serbian BioSense Institute and IVI—and coordinates cycles of bilateral scientific webinars, such as the "Italy-Germany WEBinar Series.