“I told you so. This is a revolution!” Emanuele Bezzecchi is 40 years old but, in terms of enthusiasm and creativity, he looks 20 years younger. An aeronautical engineer who joined Leonardo ten years ago, he was among the first – 2016 and 2018 – to introduce the themes of artificial intelligence and the digital twin into the company. On the strength of ten innovation awards won consecutively, Emanuele is now AI Roadmap Manager and Head of Leonardo Labs at Leonardo Helicopters, in Cascina Costa. But engineer Bezzecchi did not immediately dedicate himself to technological innovation. With a degree from the Politecnico di Milano and a master's degree from the Ecole Polytechnique in his pocket, he first decided to move to France. “I worked as a business manager and sales manager in French companies. Then the brainwave: I opened a restaurant in Aix-en-Provence. When my relationship with my girlfriend at the time ended, I returned to Italy, taking the opportunity of a second-level master's degree at the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with AgustaWestland. Mine was a reverse path: I became a technician at the age of 30...“.
Ten years can represent a century for those involved in technological innovation. Emanuele, a computer “geek” since he was a boy, played it by ear. And he started dealing with artificial intelligence well before many: “In 2016, I fell in love with AI. At the time it was a new world, to be created and explored in its infinite possibilities. In the AI Community I met Roberto Cingolani, now Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Leonardo, and I joined the Leonardo Labs project. It was a real revolution. On the wave of enthusiasm, I started writing and proposing projects on innovation applied to helicopters.” Each project earned him a Leonardo Innovation Award. Out of the ten prizes he has won, three of them are closest to his heart: Flight Condition Recognition (“using neural networks, we map the state of the helicopter and its behaviour in flight”), Virtual Sensors (“based on the flight history of a helicopter, virtual sensors inserted in a prototype allow us to understand the behaviour of the machine and identify any malfunctions”), and the Virtual Design Environment (“almost an ancestor of the digital twin, capable of bringing together software with the simulator to allow us to test different types of machines”). These are all projects that have not been left on paper but are still functioning today. “So, if at first we were ‘four guys in a garage’, we are now grown to 15. Soon, Emanuele announces, “there will be 25 of us, with cadenced objectives and well-defined themes such as AI, autonomy, advanced materials, electrification, quantum technology. We can rely on a research and development budget that, in the helicopter sector, I have seen increase tenfold in just a few years.”
His team is between 24 and 40 years old, and engineer Bezzecchi is optimistic about new arrivals: “In Leonardo you have the opportunity to see and do a lot. The choice is very wide, so I always say to young undergraduates and graduates that this is an excellent training ground for those who want to work and learn.” Emanuele's verve is contagious, but after all, “those who innovate must be optimistic.” Also in the many passions he cultivates outside the lab: writing (he has just published the book Intelligenza artificiale. Farsi le domande giuste, capire gli scenari futuri e usare in modo smart l'AI generativa, Vallardi Editore), volunteering and cooking. “Yes, I still cook and a few months ago I took part in an episode of Cortesie per gli ospiti (Courtesies for guests), the well-known TV cooking challenge. My friend Andrea and I proposed a menu created with artificial intelligence. Of course, when the AI proposed a spritz with mussel water, some corrections were necessary.” Who won? “We did, of course, with the ‘mega-bite’ menu.” It remains a question whether the calembour between “byte” (unit of measurement) and “bite” was the result of artificial intelligence or human sagacity.