Andrea Gentili

Andrea Gentili is currently the Deputy Head of the Unit “Clean Transport Transitions” in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) of the European Commission. The unit is in charge of the EU research and innovation activities in the areas of aviation, waterborne, road and rail.

He is also the Clean Planet Partnerships Manager, a horizontal function within the DG RTD, with the task of ensuring coordination of Horizon Europe (HE) partnerships in the areas of energy and transport. Within this function, his work substantially contributes to ensure synergies between HE partnerships and missions (in particular in HE Clusters 4 and 5), between EU programmes and between EU and relevant national/regional initiatives.

In the last few years, Andrea has set up several co-programmed partnerships in Horizon Europe (e.g. Clean Steel and Zero-Emission Waterborne Transport). In 2020 and 2021, Andrea has also been the chief negotiator for the EC for the revision of the legal base (3 Council Decisions) of the Research Fund for Coal&Steel. He has also been responsible for the preparation of the aviation part of the legal base (Council Regulation) for establishing the Joint Undertakings in HE (i.e. the Single Basic Act for the JUs).

From 2016 to 2019, he acted as Deputy Head of the Unit “Aviation” in charge of the Clean Sky European research public-private partnership. Before, he acted as Deputy Head of the Unit in charge for Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Biotechnologies and he launched two contractual Public-Private Partnerships within Horizon 2020 (e.g. Factories of the Future, Energy Efficient Buildings).

In the last 20 years, Andrea has been working in R&I in several areas such as energy, transport, advanced manufacturing, robotics&automation, photonics and nano-technologies, in strong coordination with industry.

Before joining the European Commission in 2001, Andrea had several different experiences in the private and public sectors. He worked as production manager in an Italian SME producing industrial refrigerators, and then he joined the Ecole de Mines d’Albi in France as researcher in the area of topology and parametric optimisations. In the late 90’s, he worked as technical director of an American software and engineering company and then became associate of a French SME where he could run his own business in the area of mechanical engineering services (e.g. static/dynamic/acoustic analysis, crash and multibody systems simulations), mainly for the automotive and aerospace sectors.

Andrea has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pisa in Italy. Andrea is happily married and is the proud father of three children. In his leisure time, he practises biking and plays regularly tennis and squash. He is also a free-diving (apnea) instructor.