Notre Dame Rome Welcomes 2025–2026 Rome Associates
Notre Dame Rome is pleased to announce the selection of its Rome Associates for the 2025–2026 academic year. This year’s cohort exemplifies the program’s spirit of interdisciplinary excellence and international collaboration with the appointment of three full professors from La Sapienza University, LUMSA University and University of Tor Vergata.
Antonio Carcaterra
Full Professor and Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome
Antonio Carcaterra is a professor of Mechtronics at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome. He is the director of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the president of the Sapienza Innovation Consortium. He has been a member of the National Commission for the Safety of Transport Systems of the Ministry of Transport since 2013. He is responsible for the Sapienza University Mobility Cluster, supported by the Ministry of Research (MIUR).
Laura Palazzani
Full Professor of Philosophy of Law and Biolaw, LUMSA University, Rome
Full Professor of Philosophy of Law at LUMSA. She is a member of the Commission on Ethics of research and Integrity in research of the National Council of Research in Italy; member of the Research Integrity Committee at La Sapienza University; Expert Evaluator of Research Ethics at the European Commission; member of the scientific Board of Enciclopedia Treccani. She is a member of the Ethics Committee for clinical trials and Clinical Ethics Committee at the Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital and Meyer in Florence.
Former member of the European Group of Ethics in Science and New Technologies at the European Commission (2011-2024); of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee (2016-2023); former delegate of Italy at the Steering Committee for Human Rights in the fields of Biomedicine and Health of the Council of Europe (2014-2025); former member and vice-chair of the National Bioethics Committee (2002-2022).
Roberto Rea
Full Professor of Philology of Italian Literature University of Tor Vergata, Rome
Roberto Rea is Full Professor of Philology of Italian Literature at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he teaches Italian Philology and Dante Philology. In spring 2023, he was a Fulbright Chair Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Chicago. He has been coordinator of the PhD program in Italian Studies and Art History Studies since 2024.
Rea is also Principal Investigator of the two-year PRIN 2022 project "Texts of Uncertain Authorship in Thirteenth-Century Italian Lyric Poetry. Methods, Practices, and Tools of Attributive Philology."
About the Rome Associates Program
The Rome Associates program brings together a select group of Rome-based scholars whose research and engagement enrich the University’s academic presence in the Eternal City.
Designed to foster an active and collaborative intellectual community, the program supports faculty fellows who will convene scholarly events, mentor undergraduate and graduate students, and strengthen institutional partnerships that advance Notre Dame’s global mission.