Dr. Francesca Scire-Scappuzzo has been a professor, an inventor, an entrepreneur, and an executive in small and large high-tech corporations both in Europe and in the US. She has been Sr. Director of Advanced Technology and Innovation at BAE Systems Inc., a large aerospace and defense corporation, where she led the external innovation initiative. She has been dedicated to leveraging new external disruptive technologies from universities, startups, small business, or larger corporations. Francesca’s team created technology roadmaps and helped startups identify and receive funding from government institutions or/and venture capital firms to further develop their products to the demanding performance parameters required by military applications and scale up to the needed production volume.

Francesca has extensive experience also in the commercial sectors, as President and CEO of Ondetech, developing antenna systems for communications and directed energy, and before this as Vice President of R&D and CTO for Metamagnetics Inc., developing electronic devices based on advanced magnetic materials. In addition to her industry experience, Francesca was Tenure Professor of EE at University of Catania in Italy, where she taught Electromagnetics and Microwaves.  During her 20 years’ experience in R&D Francesca established a strong professional network both internationally and within the Boston area in academia, start-up and SBIR/STTR government communities. Leveraging her local network she lead the opening of a BAE Systems Office at Cambridge Innovation Center, in Kendall Square, in 2017 and initiated external technology sourcing activities through supporting local start-up accelerators and incubators such as Techstars, MassChallenge, MassRobotics, MassVentures, and MIT The Engine. Francesca holds a Ph.D. in Geomatics Engineering from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich; a master’s degree in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and bachelors and master’s degrees Summa cum Laude in Electrical Engineering from University of Catania in Italy.