PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Franco Scarselli

Franco Scarselli is an AI researcher and professor at the University of Siena whose work centers on graph neural networks and machine learning for structured data. After earning a computer science Laurea with honors at the University of Pisa and a PhD at the University of Florence in 1995, he published a 1998 survey on universal approximation with feedforward neural networks and coauthored Inside PageRank in 2005. In 2009, he coauthored The Graph Neural Network Model, introducing a neural architecture that takes a graph as input and returns an output for each node, and he received Italy's scientific habilitation as a full professor in 2013. His subsequent work includes the MG^2N^2 molecular graph generator in 2020, organizing a 2025 ESANN session on life-sciences graph generation, and coauthoring skin-lesion representation learning research at WIVACE 2025. As of October 2026, he serves as Siena's principal investigator for the DEEP-GRAPH project in the Department of Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, studying deep neural networks for adaptive graph processing from February 2025 to February 2027.

Works
166
Citations
15,825
h-index
30
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By 1995

    Degrees at Pisa and Florence

    He earns a Laurea degree with honors in computer science from the University of Pisa and completes a PhD in computer science and automation engineering at the University of Florence in 1995.

  2. 1998

    Universal approximation with neural networks

    In 1998, he and A. C. Tsoi publish a survey in Neural Networks on universal approximation using feedforward neural networks.

  3. 2005

    Inside PageRank in ACM TOIT

    With Monica Bianchini and Marco Gori, he coauthors Inside PageRank in ACM Transactions on Internet Technology in 2005.

  4. 2009

    The Graph Neural Network Model

    Scarselli, Marco Gori, Ah Tsoi and colleagues publish The Graph Neural Network Model in IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks in 2009. The model takes a graph as input and returns an output for each node.

  5. 2013

    Italian scientific habilitation

    In 2013, he receives the Italian scientific habilitation as a full professor.

  6. 2020

    Molecular graph generation with GNNs

    In 2020, he coauthors Molecular graph generation with Graph Neural Networks, introducing the MG^2N^2 sequential molecular graph generator built from graph neural network modules. At each step, the generator adds a node or a group of nodes to the graph.

  7. 2025

    Life-sciences graphs and skin-lesion classification

    In 2025, he organizes ESANN's Graph Generation for Life Sciences special session with Pietro Bongini, Niccolò Pancino, Elia Giuseppe Ceroni, Veronica Lachi and Caterina Graziani. At WIVACE 2025, he presents coauthored research on cross-domain representation learning for skin-lesion classification.

  8. As of October 2026

    DEEP-GRAPH principal investigator at Siena

    As of October 2026, he is a professor at the University of Siena and its principal investigator for DEEP-GRAPH in the Department of Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. The project runs from February 2025 to February 2027 and studies deep neural networks for adaptive processing of graph data.

Career

  1. Since 2025University of SienaProfessor

Education

  1. University of PisaLaurea
  2. University of FlorencePhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Siena. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Florence. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Florence. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Franco Scarselli yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Franco Scarselli – SAILab sailab.diism.unisi.it. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Franco Scarselli's research page www3.diism.unisi.it. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. The graph neural network model research.monash.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Molecular graph generation with Graph Neural Networks arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. ESANN 2025 special sessions esann.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. WIVACE 2025 - Program sites.google.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. PRIN 2022 – “DEEP-GRAPH” – Design and Theory of Deep Graph Learning research.unisi.it. Checked 22 October 2026.