Alfredo Viglienzoni

Alfredo Viglienzoni is currently the ICT, Smart City, Innovation and BD expert and advisor for the Genova Municipality. He is part of the Urban Innovators Global community.

Till early 2024, he was Chief Operating Officer and City Manager, Technical Director and Director of the Economic Development. He has been the Chief Operating Officer of the Genova Municipality since January 2019. He has been responsible for all Technology and Innovation activities, including all ICT services.

From 2013 till the end of 2018, Alfredo was SVP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development at Skorpios Technologies, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Austin, TX.

Before joining Skorpios Alfredo was Head of Business Development for the IP and Broadband Unit at Ericsson. His main objective was to ensure IP and Broadband commercial and technical leadership, including the identification of novel and disruptive technologies as well as innovative companies to create successful ecosystems.

Previously he was the Head of the $1.2B Optical Network Business Unit within Ericsson, Stockholm. He was responsible for the complete optical portfolio P&L, product and technology strategy, full ownership of both research and development activities.

He was Head of Photonics for Ericsson at sites in the UK, Italy and Germany. He developed the first MultiHaul photonic platform that has been deployed by numerous customers for Core and Metro applications and ensured sizeable market share growth.

After a degree in Physics, his career began with a post doc and visiting scientist position at CERN, Geneva, followed by R&D activities in solid-state physics and material science, then electronics, digital imaging and network enabling technologies at University of Genova and 3M Corp.

This was followed by business development and technical management positions for 3M Corp in Europe and USA. In the USA, he led the technical development of a novel medical laser imaging system, played a key role in the development of the foundations of digital radiography technologies.

He was then with Pirelli then Cisco Systems, where he was head of project management, planning and control for the whole optical portfolio from optical components (lasers, modulators and fibers, to subsystems like optical amplifiers) for all terrestrial and submarine systems.

He holds 21 patents.
He has published more than 80 papers on innovation and business management, material science and telecommunications.

In 2005, he was among the 12 founders of the European Technology Platform Photonics21 where he served as VP and Chair of the ICT work group till the end of 2013, when he moved to the USA to join Skorpios Technologies.