Fiorella De Cindio is associate professor in the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Milano. After teaching Programming Languages, Distributed Systems Foundations and Software Engineering for many years, she has been teaching a class on Virtual Communities since 2002, now called “Internet-based Social Interactions”. Since 2011 she co-teaches with Andrea Trentini a class on Digital Citizenship and Civic Hackerism.

In 1994 she launched the Civic Informatics Laboratory (LIC). In these twenty years, her research focuses on the design and implementation of social interactive systems as well as their deployment in real life settings, with special attention to promoting civic participation and deliberation at the urban level, and to the development of software tools for supporting them. RCM, the Milano Community Network (RCM), was the first real life initiative: since 1998, it is an autonomous body, namely a Participatory Foundation, of which Fiorella De Cindio is by then President.

In 2004 she has been charged by the Italian Ministry of Innovation of a survey on the state-of-the-art in Italy of e-participation technologies. She recently contributed to the report of the Senate of the Republic on Civic Media in the Parliament context.

Because of her activity in the community, in December 2001 the Milan Municipality presented Fiorella de Cindio with the Ambrogino d’Oro