Francesco Barbato holds a university degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Rome and he is specialized in earth observation systems, image processing and geospatial data management. He worked as a researcher at the Italian research centre E.N.E.A. for the FP5 TRIDENT Project developing online 3D virtual cities, demonstrating the feasibility of innovative technological approaches of what are now mainstream and widely popular geospatial applications. After that experience he worked for 6 years for Eurimage S.p.A. (a Telespazio/Finmeccanica company), a worldwide satellite data and services provider, in the technical and business development teams.
He joined the European Commission in 2008 as Project Officer and he is currently managing a portfolio of FP7 and CIP projects focussing mainly on big data processing, geospatial data processing, and data mining and he contributes to shaping the EU's R&D programmes.