Dr. Francesco Svelto

Dr. Francesco Svelto

Dr. Francesco Svelto is the Rector of the University of Pavia in Italy, where he oversees major projects that bring together research, teaching, and industry partners.

He received the Laurea and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in 1991 and 1995, respectively. During his studies, focused on the design of low noise electronic circuits for high energy physics experiments, he was Associate Researcher for a few months in several international institutions: Brookhaven National Laboratory (US), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (US), C.E.R.N. (Switzerland), Laboratoire du l’Accelerateur Lineaire (France). 

From 1996 to 1997, he held a grant from STMicroelectronics for research in the area of CMOS wireless circuits. In 1997, he was appointed Assistant Professor at University of Bergamo, and in 2000 he joined University of Pavia.

He is a technical advisor of RFDomus Inc., a start-up he co-founded in 2002 dedicated to highly integrated GPS receivers. After merging with Glonav Inc. (Ireland), RFDomus has been acquired by NXP Semiconductors in 2007. Since January 2006, he has been the director of a scientific laboratory, joint between University of Pavia and STMicrolectronics, dedicated to research in microelectronics. 

Dr. Svelto's research interests are in the field of RF and mm-wave systems for wireless communications, high-speed serial links, and ultrasound electronics for medical diagnostic. Silicon photonics, both in the area of optical components and electronics transceiver design, is drawing more and more research interest.

He has been a member of the technical program committee of the International Solid State Circuits Conference, the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, and the Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits Technology Meeting: all organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is presently a member of the technical program committee of the European Solid State Circuits Conference. He served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (2003–2007), and as a guest editor for a special issue in March 2003. Dr. Svelto is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Lecturer.

In 2008, Dr. Svelto was appointed Vice President of the Faculty of Engineering at University of Pavia. Between 2013-2019, he was Vice President for Knowledge Transfer. He has been the Rector of University of Pavia since October 2019.