Renzo Tomellini

Renzo Tomellini (born 1960) is a chemist by education, with further training in management and business administration, European law and regulations. Currently Head of a Unit at the European Commission.^[1]

Career

Researcher at a centre for the development of materials (CSM)^[2] since 1986. At the European Commission started end 1991 managed ECSC research projects on steel. Then manager of the ECSC-Steel RTD, assistant to the director of “Industrial Technologies”, Head of the newly created Unit “Nano- and Converging Sciences and Technologies”, then of "Materials" and, from January 2014, Mr. Renzo Tomellini is Head of Unit "Strategy" within the Directorate for Climate Action and Resource Efficiency of the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. His career has been into materials science and engineering, first in steel making and then in Nanotechnology, whose development he pioneered via an integrated and systemic approach, involving all stakeholders (academia, business, civil society, financial actors...) and also creating and managing a dedicated group gathering concerned European Commission services. He is energetic on a transformative agenda for a sustainable and responsible development, also at international level; he is particularly engaged in the European environmental research and innovation policy. Attentive to societal implications of research and innovation, in 2002, he co-organised the Euro-American workshop "Nanotechnology: Revolutionary Opportunities and Societal Implications", editing the proceedings with Mihail Roco of the US National Science Foundation;^[3] more recently he participated in the United Nations' Dialogues on possible arrangements for a technology facilitation mechanism to promote the development, transfer and dissemination of clean and environmentally sound technologies.^[4]

Publications, movies and other media

His intellectual production includes many articles^[5] as well as authoring or editing books, amongst which: STEEL CLEANLINESS AND MOULD THERMAL MONITORING, DEVELOPMENTS IN ALTERNATIVE IRONMAKING PROCESSES, TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEMS RELATED TO SCRAP UTILIZATION, EUROPEAN STEELMAKING DEVELOPMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES IN ROLLING AND REHEATING,^[6] RECYCLING OF ZINC-COATED STEEL SCRAP, MODELLING OF STEEL MICROSTRUCTURAL EVOLUTION DURING THERMO-MECHANICAL TREATMENT, ON-LINE OPTICAL SURFACE INSPECTION OF STEEL STRIP -ACHIEVEMENTS AND OUTLOOK, APPLICATION OF ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK SYSTEMS IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY, PROGRESS IN ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE STEEL AND METALS INDUSTRIES, RESEARCH NEEDS ON NANOPARTICLES, STEEL RESEARCH: FROM THE ECSC TO THE FUTURE^[7] to mark the end of the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community.

He realized four standards on reference materials for analysis and measurements, launched 2 newsletters (one on steel research and one on nanotechnology) and four web-based pages such as The Materials Blog ^[8] and the GreenRTD yammer page.^[9] He conceived four movies STEEL RESEARCH: FROM THE ECSC TO THE FUTURE in 2002, NANO:THE NEXT DIMENSION in 2002, NANOTECHNOLOGY in 2003, NANO IN LIFE in 2010^[10] on science and research issues and contributed to France 2 4-hour documentary BIENVENUE DANS LE NANOMONDE. Amongst his initiatives, very popular has been The Secret Materials Box, an educational toy box devoted to stimulate interest for science in the younger public,^[11] as well as the movie NANOTECHNOLOGY (available in 20 languages), which received various prizes and recognition internationally.^[12] Very numerous are his public interventions such as interviews^[13] and speeches at international^[14] or national conferences.

In December 2012, at the launch of the so-called MANIFESTO FOR A RESOURCE-EFFICIENT EUROPE from the Members of the European Resource Efficiency Platform, he was author of some further thinking around such an approach, with an overview of concepts linked to close-loop management of materials and to the circular economy.^[15] In a world with growing pressures on resources and the environment, it is needed to go for the transition to a resource-efficient and ultimately regenerative circular economy. Future jobs and competitiveness, as a major importer of resources, are dependent on our ability to get more added value, and achieve overall decoupling, through a systemic change in the use and recovery of resources in the economy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this could lead to steady economic growth with business opportunities across the whole economy.

Academic career

He teaches knowledge management and currently is lecturer^[16] in "Management of Enterprises in the European Union" at the University of Bergamo, Faculty of Economics.

References