Team

Cristiano is co-founder of Open Evidence and Aggregate Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan and at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. He has over 25 years of scientific, policy-applied research experience spanning across economics, sociology and behavioural studies. Cristiano works at the interdisciplinary frontier of social sciences to develop new theoretical and methodological approaches at the agency/structure juncture. Since 2012 he has focused on experimental behavioural sciences with the aim to introduce novel approaches to policy-making and policy impact evaluation. Cristiano has had researched and worked in the USA, Russia, The Netherlands, Italy and Spain. In the course of his academic career he has taken several leaves of absence to serve as a civil servant at the United Nations and the European Union. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and a Degree in Economics from Bocconi University. A native Italian speaker, Cristiano is fluent in English, Russian and Spanish.

Pedro is an Data Analytics and Big Data architect at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. He has more than 20 years of experience in the development and design of Information Systems and data architectures. He also participates as a technical advisor and as an associate lecturer in the postgraduate degree on Big Data Analytics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Pedro is an enthusiastic of Data Science, Data Management and Data Analytics from a business and practical perspective. He has strong mathematical and statistical skills as well as advanced programming and design capabilities, focusing on Data Analytics, Big Data techniques, tools, frameworks and cloud services. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), a MBA from ESADE Business School (Barcelona), a MSc in Innovation and Research from UPC BarcelonaTech and a postgraduate degree in Business Intelligence from UOC. A Spanish native speaker, Pedro is fluent in English and Catalan.

Núria is a researcher with a strong background in management of EU-funded projects and international affairs. She manages communication and dissemination actions for several European projects. She has broad experience in the development of communication and exploitation plans, stakeholder engagement, quality control procedures on deliverables, organisation of workshops and conferences and management of internal and external communications. Núria also has experience in data gathering and reporting in the fields of EU policy, ICTs, innovation and education. Núria holds a Degree in Applied Linguistics by University Pompeu Fabra and is currently studying a MSc in Societal Challenges and Innovation at the University of Barcelona. A native Spanish and Catalan speaker, Núria is fluent in English.

Riccardo is a sociologist and his work is focused on the analysis of socio-spatial deprivation and the incidence of socially constructed anxieties on people’s feelings of unsafety. He completed his studies in four countries (Italy, France, Belgium and Spain) and obtained his PhD degree from the University of Barcelona in 2016. He has an extensive knowledge on European Union’s funding programmes, and he has been the scientific coordinator of the project MARGIN (2015-2017) funded by the Horizon 2020 programme. He recently spent one year as a post-doc researcher at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. A native Italian speaker, Riccardo speaks fluently Spanish, English, and French, and intermediate Portuguese.

Albert is a researcher at Open Evidence and adjunct professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Albert holds a university degree in Sociology and a master degree of Research on Applied Sociology by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He has more than 10 years of experience working both as a researcher and as a professor in several universities and research groups. Albert has expertise in quantitative and qualitative data analysis. His current areas of research and interest include education inequality, higher education, vocational education and training, lifelong learning and educational pathways. A native Catalan and Spanish speaker, Albert is fluent in English and intermediate German.

Francisco is co-founder of Open Evidence and Associate Professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His research is focused on the social, economic, cultural and policy issues arising from information and communication technologies, particularly on networked citizenship, eHealth, and eInclusion. Francisco has been a research fellow in the Department of Sociology - Science & Technology Studies Unit at the University of York, and a Scientific and Project Officer at the Joint Research Centre - Information Society Unit of the European Commission (JRC-IPTS) where he worked on economic evaluation and modelling of Personal Health Systems. He has a wealth of experience on multivariate statistical analysis and survey research. Francisco holds a Ph.D. in Information and Knowledge Society at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and a degree in Economics from Universidad de Oviedo. A Spanish native speaker, Francisco is fluent in English and Catalan.

Andrea has worked on physical chemistry, environmental sciences, applied statistics, impact assessment and science for policy. His main disciplinary focus is on sensitivity analysis of model output, a discipline where statistical tools are used to interpret the output from mathematical or computational models, and on sensitivity auditing, an extension of sensitivity analysis to the entire evidence-generating process in a policy context. Andrea has worked for 33 year at the Joint Research Centre, leading for ten years the unit of econometrics and applied statistics. He enjoyed training EC staff in impact assessment methodologies, and providing methodological and technical support to many directorates of the EC. Andrea also worked on statistical indicators and on the use of multi-criteria methodologies. He is one of the co-authors the OECD-JRC official handbook for composite indicators. His most recent papers have tackled sensitivity analysis and auditing, the future of statistics, the rational of evidence based policy, and various critiques of problematic quantifications. Andrea publishes regularly on the crisis of science and the post-truth discussion in the online journal The Conversation, and gives courses in sensitivity analysis, sensitivity auditing and ethics of quantification. At present he is adjunct professor at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT) - University of Bergen (UIB), where he cooperates with a team interested in post normal science. Andrea lives in Barcelona where he leads the European Centre for Governance in Complexity, a Norwegian NGO located at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). www.andreasaltelli.eu

Samuele received his PhD from Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2013 for a thesis on lanthanide chemistry. In his research career he has applied quantitative frameworks such as the MuSIASEM methodology to several sustainability dimensions, especially in the energy and waste-management fields. He has also been the scientific project manager of the MAGIC (Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: Informing Nexus Security) H2020 project during its first year of activities. Recently, he has also expanded his field of inquiries to sensitivity auditing, uncertainty quantification and global sensitivity analysis. His research interests also cover complexity and complex systems (such as societies) besides quality assessments of modelling practices especially in the field of sustainability and other realms affected by uncertainty.

Frans is a postdoctoral researcher at the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, and assistant professor at the Communication Science Institute, Amsterdam University, The Netherlands. His research focuses on sociology, behavioural economics, communication science, and psychology, predominantly examining the effect of health promotion on actual behaviour. He has expertise in quantitative and qualitative data analysis, conducting, amongst others, randomized controlled trials, focus groups, surveys and analysing big data sets. Frans holds a PhD in Social Sciences (cum laude), a master degree in Sociology and in Psychology, and a bachelor degree in psychology, from the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. A Dutch native speaker, and fluent in German and English.

Simone is a researcher with a strong background in EU economic policies and expertise in a wide range of policy areas including, collaborative economy, employment, entrepreneurship, financial sector and space policy. He worked mainly on explanatory studies, impact assessments, costs evaluation as well as cross-country data collection and analysis. Most projects were carried out for the European Commission, DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, as well as other DGs and EU agencies. Before joining Open Evidence, Simone was a consultant for VVA Europe, a public policy consultancy providing economic, market and regulatory advice to public sector institutions. He also worked at Deloitte Italy in strategic and operational consulting for the financial sector and he participated in a traineeship programme at the European Parliament. His academic credentials include a Double Degree Master of Science in European Economics at Maastricht School of Business and Economics and Université Catholique de Louvain and a Bachelor Degree in International Economics and Management at Bocconi University. A native Italian speaker, Simone speaks fluently English, Spanish and intermediate French.

Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri holds a BA in Psychology of Communication from the University of Siena, an MSc in Social Research Methods (Statistics) from the Methodology Institute of the London School of Economics (LSE) and a PhD in Social Psychology from the LSE.  He is Associate Professor of Research Methodology and Cognitive Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Trento. He was Senior Lecturer at University of Leicester. He has been Lecturer at University of East Anglia and a scientific fellow at the European Commission JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). Before joining the IPTS, he has been a research associate at the Institut Jean Nicod (Ecole Normale Supérieure) in Paris. He has published in scientific journals such as Nature, PLOS One, Computers in Human Behavior, Public Understanding of Science, Big Data & Society and others.