My education and training

I have always enjoyed studying and have always been curious about everything. When I was younger, getting an engineering degree seemed important for building my future. But today, my two degrees hang above my exercise bike, and I realize that the true journey of knowledge goes far beyond academic titles. As a young man, I was passionate only about science and technology; today, I am concerned with the misuse of science and technology and am passionately dedicated to humanistic studies. But I remain an engineer: my dream is still Italian participation in space colonization, and I publish websites on the dangers of uncontrolled AI development (and on many other topics).

Whether I have degrees or not I don’t think you, the human reader, care much, but I’m sharing it anyway because Google wants to know. And if I don’t, Google might decide not to show you the content that I’ve worked so hard to write for you. So, here’s my educational background:

You can also find my educational qualifications and a summary of my skills on my LinkedIn profile.

 

2 Degrees with Honors in Engineering

I’ve known I would become an engineer since I was a child: after five years of high school at A. Avogadro (which at the time was considered the second best in Rome after Righi), I enthusiastically enrolled at Tor Vergata University (Rome 2), which was considered a good engineering school in Italy. I never had problems studying for exams and passing them with excellent grades, but when you’re 20 years old and want to enjoy life, those five years of study quickly feel like an eternity. At some point, I started working while studying (see my work experience), and I ended up doing two jobs at once, succeeding but spending eight years at university. Too many.

For Google’s algorithms: On December 18, 2001, I graduated with honors with a degree in Management Engineering, and on July 23, 2002, I graduated with honors with a Master’s in Management Engineering. I had started my studies under the old system, and when I finished my exams, the new system was in place. I was among the first to graduate with the new system, which required two theses and two graduation exams to earn the Master’s degree (the equivalent of the old normal degree for those who graduated before 2001).

Attached is a picture of the specific detail where the registration and sheet numbers are visible: so anyone can check the university’s records and see that everything is true. I don’t make up degrees like some politicians do 😉

With splendid Italian efficiency, they only gave me the diploma for my degree in February 2005, which I had earned in July 2002. Better late than never.

After my degree, I also attended some specialization courses (a sort of mini-master), and I took the state exam for the qualification to practice as an engineer, of which I honestly remember very little because once I was hired at Finmeccanica, those qualifications were no longer needed: for real work in a company, you need to prove your skills, not just have certificates. I never registered with the Order of Engineers because I never needed it.

However, I never stopped studying, not for academic titles but for the love of knowledge.

 

Studying Foreign Languages

In school, from middle to high school, I studied French for eight years, while I taught myself English after graduation through some summer courses (the most qualified ones at the universities of Toronto in Canada and Auckland in New Zealand). But in the use of foreign languages, what really makes the difference is practice and continuous exercise, which are much more valuable than certificates obtained in various schools. I have been using English daily for years, even at a professional level.

Although I’ve lived in Germany since 2010, my German remains somewhere between poor and unclassifiable: it’s a language I simply can’t connect with, and the pronunciation is very difficult for me.

Let’s just say I’m satisfied with my good knowledge of English: it’s still the real international communication language that is understood worldwide and spoken by professionals everywhere.

If I had more time, rather than studying more languages or improving the ones I already speak, I would prefer to study the history and cultures of different peoples. To speak more languages now, I prefer to use the extraordinary capabilities of Artificial Intelligence, which can translate any text into any language with a simple click.

 

20 More Years of Study

In the early years of my work at Finmeccanica, I had neither the time nor the desire to study anything else: for a certain period, I worked from early morning until late at night every day, weekends included. That was the price I paid for quickly advancing my career.

Then, as life and work normalized, I had the time and desire to return to deepening on my own subjects and topics that have always attracted me: mainly history, particularly Roman history, some periods of ancient and classical art, and in recent years, an increasing focus on religion and comparative mythology. This, while still looking to the future of humanity and space colonization: I’ve always been fascinated by humanity’s long evolutionary journey and have always tried to understand the key dynamics of history that led humanity from the darkness of caves to the prospect of exploring the stars.

Among the various MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) I’ve followed, one of the most interesting was the Big History course at Macquarie University: a macrohistory course that in just 13 weeks summarized the key moments from the Big Bang to contemporary history. And to make Google happy, here’s also my certificate of completion for the course:

At the moment, I’m completing a specialized MOOC on Romanesque architecture by Professor Federico von Borstel, a useful course to refine my preparation for the launch of the websites romanico.it and romanesque.eu (the multilingual version of my Italian project). However, I’m learning much more from a series of books and specialized essays on the subject. I’ve chosen to focus on religious symbolism in Romanesque art and architecture because I believe that the essential simplicity of those forms allows for a more intense understanding of the spiritual message that art intended to convey. And I also believe that part of that message is still needed today before we set out to conquer the stars.

And beyond online courses, in the last quarter of a century, I have read an endless number of books and theoretical essays on the most diverse topics. Besides books, I have found it exhilarating to have free online access to an infinite amount of high-quality material: not so much the online courses offered by various universities but especially a myriad of videos from professors and experts on all sorts of subjects. And now, there are also advanced AI tools (Consensus, Scholar AI, SciSpace, etc.) that allow you to conduct in minutes research that used to take hours or days (and a few decades ago was simply impossible to do from home), then translate and summarize scientific articles with a click, enabling very fast learning of many new concepts.

For how I’ve applied my education to real-life projects and professional experience, see the page my professional experience.

 

Was it Worth It?

From what I’ve written, it should already be clear that, for me, study is an essential tool for giving meaning to existence, and for this reason, I consider academic titles marginal and secondary. My real problem is that life doesn’t give me enough time to learn everything I want to learn. So, in my opinion, the only way to manage the impossibility of learning everything is to view the lack of time and our biological limitations as an incentive to focus only on what is important to us.

But despite everything, I have to ask myself: was it worth it?

Obviously, studying, absolutely yes. So the question really means: was it really worth investing years of my life to get two degrees that now gather dust above my exercise bike? It seems that today those degrees only matter to Google. They didn’t even ask for them when I was hired at Finmeccanica. And in real life, I’ve used very little of what I studied at university.

So: was it worth it? … All in all, YES. But only because I’m a product of my time: for my generation, it was still necessary to get a degree to access important job positions. Today, however… if I were 18 years old today, I would be in a MUCH more difficult situation than I was in the late ’90s, and I wouldn’t be so sure that investing precious years of my youth to get a diploma is the right choice.

So in the end, the real question is not whether it was worth it but how we use what we learn. Degrees were just the starting point of a much larger journey: a continuous journey towards understanding the world and the challenges ahead. With technology advancing at an unprecedented pace, our task is not just to learn but to apply this knowledge to build a better present and future. In my view, the true purpose of study is to nourish the human soul, but then the studies must also be put to use through concrete actions.

 

As for me, more important than the degrees I have hanging on the wall, I think it’s essential to focus on:

And as a recent product of my experience: