Danilo Rubini, current head of International Relations and Space Diplomacy Department, under the International Affairs Directorate of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), has over twenty years of experience in the aerospace sector.

Graduated with honors in Mechanical Engineering with specialization in Numerical Fluid-Dynamics at the University of Sapienza (Rome, 1998), he continued his studies with a Master of Science in Engineering Policy and Management of Technology in the IN+ Institute at the Instituto Superior Tecnico (Lisbon, PT), the Master SpaceTech in space systems and applications at the University of Delft (NL) and executive courses like: Space System Architecture and Design (MIT Sloan); Technology Foresight (PREST, Univ. Manchester); Project Innovation (Uni. Bocconi).

In the Italian Space Agency, he has been Head of the Technology Office, has been working for the Marketing Unit and previously for the Small and Medium Enterprises Unit. Today with the role of Alternate, he has been part of the National Delegation for the ESA Industrial Policy Committee since 2006, then National Delegate for the ESA Technology Harmonization Advisory Group for more than ten years, National Delegate and Advisor for the Space Technical Expert Group of the European Commission in the programs H2020 and Horizon Europe, National Delegate in the JTF (Joint Task Force) ESA-EC-EDA on Critical Technologies; ASI delegate for the OECD Space Forum.

He has been Project Manager for several technology development projects, had subsystem specialist roles in the ASI concurrent engineering programs for the feasibility design of space missions. Among the various roles, he was project and operative manager for the ASI platform aimed at innovation and market analyses for space technologies: a methodological big data approach implemented through a software platform to observe, classify manage and visualize digital data (papers, patents, industry databases, web newsfeed, non-structured documents etc.) targeted to economic and technology foresight