Stephen Trueman
Sapienza Innovazione, Collaborative Research
Stephen has been the managing director of Sapienza Innovazione since it began operations in November 2006. Its partners are Unicredit, Filas, BIC-Lazio and the Sapienza, University of Rome.
Its main goal is to support the researchers of the Sapienza for all innovation activities, from spin-offs to licensing, as well as running the Joint Labs which bring together companies and the various research groups across the University in collaborative research programs with industrial objectives. It also provides the University with support for research funding including access to the EU 7th framework programme.
He has spent most of his career in Italy, having graduated from Oxford in mathematics and worked at IBM in the UK on developing network architectures. In Italy he worked for various IT companies, including Olivetti, before moving towards research and Artificial Intelligence (Expert Systems). In 1989 he moved to Trento to work for a research centre (IRST), where for nine years he built up the EU funding office, and then for a further seven years developed the EU funding office of the University of Trento. During that period he was also responsible for the Innovation Relay Centre for Trentino/Alto Adige.
For a brief period he has covered the position of research director at the University of L’Aquila, before accepting his current position as soon as the opportunity arose in late 2006.