Founder and CEO of Ticinum Aerospace
Higher Education – United Kingdom, 2010
‘Those who participate in Erasmus+ enter the business market where they see the theory they learned at university applied in practice.’
After 5 months of Erasmus+ experience during his graduate studies in Pavia, Gianni has a career path in sight. Working at a global risk and disaster management consultancy in Ashtead during his Erasmus+, he learnt tools that assess the risk of natural hazards by means of space-borne Earth observation data. This was the ‘starting point’ for him to launch his own company, after completing a PhD and going on to invent new state-of-the art techniques in geospatial data analysis. The Erasmus+ experience helped Gianni to gain a clear view on his carrier aspirations: 'if I hadn't done Erasmus I would still be confused about what to do next ... this experience gave me a hint about what I want to do for the next 10-20 years … After my experience I went back to Italy and started to focus more in-depth on catastrophe analysis based on satellite data. I made a lot of new connections through networking and today I am leading a company in this field.’
Other than career path and technical skills, Gianni perfected his presentation and language skills, and opened his mind to other cultures and work practices which he later put in practice in Italy and Brazil - all thanks to his Erasmus+ experience.
As an employer today, Gianni is an advocate for young people going abroad and says that those who have travelled are more prone to learn new things, to accept different and challenging situations and to bring forward new ideas: ‘if you have a lot of experiences you can see much further than others … you have more data to compare and you can take better decisions based on your experiences.’
His company, Ticinum Aerospace, is currently active in satellite data analysis for risk assessment, and has been awarded a gold medal and a certificate as the ‘most innovative company’ by the province of Pavia in Italy.