Nicoletta De Francesco was born in Florence in 1951. She is a 1st grade professor of Data Processing Systems at the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Pisa where she teaches on the Information Engineering degree course.
Her research activity focuses principally on the domain of theoretical computer science where she makes reference to the formal methods for specifying and verifying concurrent and distributed systems. She is the co-author of papers presenting innovative algorithms for debugging and prototyping concurrent systems, as well as new methodologies for controlling the properties of the code. Some of this work resulted in a new action-based modal logic being defined, enabling very effective verifications to be obtained, and the development of tools capable of controlling information flow in Java code. From 2003 to 2010 she was Vice Rector of Teaching at the University of Pisa and since 2010 she has been the Vice Rector of the same university.
In 2014 the University of Pisa listed Nicoletta on the Ordine del Cherubino for academic excellence. Aside from her academic work, Nicoletta started to pursue her interest in art from the mid-1990s. Using glazed terracotta she creates mosaics in the majority of cases depicting medieval and renaissance cities and, more recently, compositions inspired by botanical gardens.