Marco Simoni

Marco Simoni is an Italian political economist and executive. Since 2026, he has been Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), one of Europe's leading think tanks dedicated to the study of international politics and global economic relations. 
He graduated in Political Science from Sapienza University of Rome and earned a PhD in Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE), where he taught and conducted research for several years, focusing in particular on comparative political economy and the transformations of European capitalism. 
After his academic experience in the United Kingdom, he returned to Italy to work in public institutions. Between 2014 and 2018, he served as Adviser to the Prime Minister on international economic relations and industrial policy, with a particular focus on Europe, the Gulf region, China, and the United States. From 2018 to 2022, he was the founding President of Human Technopole (HT), the life sciences research institute established on the site of the former Milan Expo. Starting from scratch, he built an international research institute equipped with state-of-the-art technologies in genomics, artificial intelligence, and molecular biology. Human Technopole also enabled the development of a new innovation district in Milan. 
He has also served as both executive and non-executive board member of other public and private organisations operating in the fields of applied research, asset management, venture capital, and insurance. At SACE, Italy's Export Credit Agency, he also chaired the Board Committee for Sustainability and Strategy. 
Alongside his institutional and executive responsibilities, he has continued his academic and research activities, teaching political economy at Luiss University in Rome and contributing to numerous public policy research projects at the Luiss Centre for European Analysis and Policy. 
Throughout his career, he has worked on issues related to economic growth, innovation, industrial policy, the relationship between the state and the market, and the transformations of contemporary capitalism. He is the author of essays and articles published in Italian and international academic journals, and for the past twenty-five years he has been a regular contributor to Italian and international media on issues at the intersection of politics, economics, and society. 
As Director of IAI, he now leads an independent research institute founded in 1965 by Altiero Spinelli, dedicated to the study of international politics, European security, and global economic dynamics.