Dr. Alessandro Annoni is the President of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE). He has worked in the European Commission's Joint Research Centre since 1997 as Head of the "Spatial Data Infrastructure" and "Digital Earth" Units. Under his leadership, these units carried out research on information infrastructures, including multidisciplinary interoperability, and supported the design and technical coordination of the INSPIRE Directive which sets out the rules for the creation of the European Spatial Data Infrastructure. From 2016 until his retirement in 2020 he was Head of the Digital Economy Unit. The Unit addressed the techno-socio-economic aspects related to the Digital Economy, providing guidance to accelerate the transition to a data-driven economy in Europe and understand the issues and challenges of a more connected world (IoT). The Unit was also responsible for the European Artificial Intelligence Observatory (AI Watch). Alessandro graduated in Physics from the University of Milan and before joining the JRC, he worked for several years in the private sector as manager of companies specialized in Remote Sensing, Geomatics, Software and Information Systems development.

Dr. Alessandro has about 40 years working experience in environmental applications and information technologies and more recently on digital economy and digital transformation. In 2006 he served as co-chair of the Architecture and Data Committee of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and successively as co-chair of GEO Infrastructure Implementation Board. Alessandro has been awarded the 2013 Ian McHarg Medal of the European Geosciences Union reserved for distinguished research in "Information Technology applied to Earth and Space Sciences". In 2016 he received the Digital Earth Science and Technology Contribution Award from the International Society for Digital Earth for outstanding contribution to advancing the development of Digital Earth. In 2020 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Geospatial World Awards 2020.