Alessandro is a C-level Executive with 25+ years of experience in the software industry and an entrepreneur with international expertise in founding and managing software companies. He received two “Gartner Cool Vendor” recognitions (in 2012 with Lightstreamer and in 2023 with Now4real). He created Lightstreamer, a leading real-time event broker, used by hundreds of businesses in six continents, serving millions of end-users. Lightstreamer powers mission-critical applications in the financial services, aerospace, defense, media, and gaming verticals. He founded Now4real, with the goal of enabling instant communities on the web. Alessandro graduated in Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and in General Management at SDA Bocconi. He started his career as a researcher and teacher at Cefriel. He worked for Par-Tec, where he designed several innovative trading platforms for different financial institutions. He is currently the CEO of both Lightstreamer and Now4real.

Patrizia is a Full Professor of Psychology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, where she teaches courses in motivation and decision making. She graduated in Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome and got her PhD at the University of Padua. She was Fulbright research visiting scholar at Stanford University and spent several periods abroad as a research visiting scholar at other prestigious universities, including the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Freie University Berlin, and Stockholm University. Patrizia is author of more than 100 scientific papers published in high-impact journals where she investigated psychological mechanisms underlying people’s behavior and choices. She is particularly interested in exploring individual subjective experience in both real and virtual environments looking for key engaging aspects and features.