Franco Marra

Franco Marra

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Shareholder and CTO in Nexture Consulting srl

ICT consultant

+393294206070

skype: f.marra

From October 2011 has been working as a member of the Nexture team in the EU-funded CUbRIK project (http://www.cubrikproject.eu/) reporting about the project progresses and being involved in the project dissemination activities. CUbRIK is a 8.9 M€ Large-scale Integrating Project (IP) funded by EU with 6.8 M€ in the framework of FP7-ICT Networked Media and Search Systems. CUbRIK aims at constructing an open platform for multimedia search pratictioners, researchers and end-users where different classes of contributors can meet and advance the state-of-the-art by joining forces. Important scientific contribution is the integration of human and social computation in the design and execution of the most typical search processes, and the enrichment of multimedia content and query processing with temporal and spatial entities. On the business side, CUbRIK will endorse an ecosystem where a multitude of actors will concur to implement real application scenarios that validate the platform features in real world conditions and for vertical search domains

From the beginning  of 2010 he has been working as a consultant in Fondazione Adriano Olivetti (FAO). Funded by Regione Piemonte and banking institutions, FAO is measuring progresses of the stocks of intangible values in local industries, due to clustering policies  established by the local government to improve economy. More specifically, he has been involved in the data survey methodology, in the choice and definition of support tools and in establishing the fundamentals of a future software platform to represent  intangibles.

Up to the end of 2009  he supported as a consultant:

• through Nexture, the management team of the European Project Pharos, an EU funded research project aimed to implement an audiovisual search engine based on innovative annotation, search and social analysis techniques. This project ranked an excellence scoring during its final EU review. Subsequently, it was broadly mentioned by newspapers, TV news and awarded by the Italian Republic President Giorgio Napolitano.
• CSP , a research center based in Turing – Italy – which is setting up, on behalf of Regione Piemonte, a living laboratory (Borgolab) in a 3500 people village north of Turin (Borgofranco d’Ivrea), to test innovative Internet services through a wireless mesh network and a linux based software solution designed to contrast digital divide.

In 2007:

• he has been technical director in a project implementing the wireless network of Chamois. Chamois is a high mountain little village in Valle D’Aosta which banned motor vehicles from its territory – the village itself is served only by a cableway - in order to preserve nature and to exploit high level niche tourism, such as mountain climbing and paragliding. The 30 Chamois families can now access post-office, health and government on-line public services, develop their local business, exploit low cost VoIP calls and stay informed and entertained by using internet wireless connections. Besides residential and business connections, the Chamois infrastructure also includes a public WiFi Hot Spot in the village main square and a tele-working centre in the public library.

From 2004 to 2007 he:

• supported Nexture, a consulting company whose he is co-founder and CTO, in writing EU project funding proposals;
• took part, on behalf of Digital Television - a digital TV start up company -, of the xDSL spectrum definition activities carried on by the Italian National Communication Authority;
• designed of behalf of Digital Television the ADSL and satellite communication infrastructure of Borgofranco d’Ivrea;
• participated, as a consultant of Nexture and CSI Piemonte, to the definition of the new regional public communication data network WiPie and to the implementation of VoIP services in a mountain community of villages.

Up to 2003 he has been a R&D consultant and manager, and mktg manager, being involved in the ICT activities of Alenia, Olivetti, Digital Equipment Corporation, Infostrada and Wind Telecommunications.

In such positions, he, as R&D consultant, developed:

• a civil airport computer-based automation system in Alenia;
• Olivetti operating systems software components, mainly at the Olivetti Advanced Technology Center in Cupertino CA;
• Computer Integrated Manufacturing applications in DEC and Olivetti;

as R&D and mktg manager, he handled:

• product marketing operations for various computer-based Olivetti products;
• the R&D Olivetti software factory;
• the Olivetti voice and data communication infrastructure, including its migration to Infostrada;

and eventually, as R&D manager, he run in Infostrada and Wind:

• wireless phones services experimental activities, in the framework of a Hughes Communications / Infostrada agreement;
• various European Union and Italian funded research activities about xDSL, VoIP, IPv6, IPTV, IP QoS and fixed wireless networks.

Last but not least, he was responsible in Wind for the definition of the Company technologies and methods to include disabled people in the Company operations.

The outcomes of his activities have been presented in various national and international conventions.