European Young Leaders

Paolo is an award-winning Italian writer and theoretical physicist. His first novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, is a critically acclaimed worldwide bestseller, selling over a million copies and being translated into thirty languages. It also received an equally successful cinematic adaptation. Paolo also wrote the critically acclaimed The Human Body and Like Family. He has been widely recognised for his work and was the youngest winner ever of Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize, as well as the Premio Campiello, a highly competitive annual prize.

Cristina is Board Member, COO and Head of Contents Treccani Futura, the new Italian cultural and education Edtech hub born from the acquisition by Treccani Scuola of Impactscool, the company she co-founded and guided as CEO for 5 years. Cristina is a populizer, a social entrepreneur and an active citizen with the aim to impact society positively. After selling Wish Days, co-founded in 2006 with Andrea Dusi, she created a social enterprise (Impactscool) in order to bring awareness about the future and innovative education to schools, universities and organizations on technologies, ethics and future studies tools. Her mission is to give everyone access to the future in the global – fast changing society in the midst of the 4th industrial revolution. Her motto is “the future is open source”: shaped together as a co-creation activity and accessible to everyone.

Thanks to the work done with Impactscool and to her previous experiences she has been invited to join the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum (2019-2024) in 2019 and the EYL40 community in 2020.

She is also member of the International Advisory Board of the Institute for Ethical AI in Education and Independent Advisor in the advisory board of Fondo Italiano d’Investimento SGR.

Books: “Benvenuti nel 2050” (EGEA, 2019), “Destination 2050” (BUP, 2020).

Diva is an Italian scientist and entrepreneur with a fervent interest in robotics and sustainability. She channelled her passion by creating a home robotics start-up Solenica and developed an AI-powered smart mirror that reflects natural light around the home. The idea to transform indoor spaces came to Diva while working towards her doctorate in Computational Biology in Cambridge, where she spent much of her days inside craving sunshine. Diva is also a graduate of the Singularity University programme on exponential technologies at NASA in 2010. She was awarded the Premio Giovane for the Environment and the Young Global Innovator Award by the MIT Tech Review for Italy, as well as the Pleiade International Award for Innovation and New Technologies.