EmTech Italy

An international innovation event in the heart of Rome

EmTech is the format that MIT Technology Review has brought to major cities around the world for years to showcase emerging technologies before they go mainstream. Since 2025, the event has had its own Italian stage: EmTech Italy, organized by MIT Technology Review Italia in partnership with the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, located in the Municipality of Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, in the Lazio region.

The venue is the Cu.Bo — an acronym for CUltural BOx —, the university's learning center inaugurated on Via Álvaro del Portillo, in the Trigoria area on the southern outskirts of the capital. With over ten thousand square meters including an auditorium, dynamic classrooms, a simulation center, and study spaces, it is a facility designed for innovative teaching that naturally lends itself to hosting an event on the technologies of the future.

Tech for Humanity: the guiding theme

While the first edition focused on the dialogue between Human & Tech, the second shifted the emphasis to Tech for Humanity: moving beyond questioning how humans coexist with technology to asking how innovation can be designed from the start to address major collective challenges. This shift in perspective runs through the entire program, making EmTech Italy more than just a technology conference.

Program themes

• Artificial intelligence as a global transformation factor, with applications in healthcare, energy, and industry, along with the ethical, social, and economic implications it entails.
• Health, medicine, and biotechnology: assisted diagnosis, new drugs, regulation, and access to therapies.
• Quantum Era: quantum computing as one of the most promising frontiers of contemporary research.
• Energy and sustainability: energy transition, smart grids, and low-impact industrial models.
• Work and business: how platforms and automation are reshaping organizations and skills.

Who takes the stage

The format alternates between keynotes, round tables, and in-depth sessions, featuring over fifty speakers from the academic, scientific, and industrial worlds, both Italian and international. Past speakers on the Roman stage include MIT researchers such as Tomaso Poggio and Mercedes Balcells-Camps, economist Philippe Aghion (2025 Nobel Laureate in Economics), platform economy expert Sangeet Paul Choudary, as well as leaders from the host university and representatives of Italian regulatory institutions.

Beyond conferences: live demonstrations

One of the hallmarks of EmTech Italy is its live demos, which bring prototypes that are usually confined to laboratories onto the stage. These include the TWIN robotic lower-limb exoskeleton, developed by the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) with the INAIL Prosthetic Center, and AlterEgo, a teleoperated robotic avatar born from the collaboration between IIT and the University of Pisa, designed for assistance and exploration in hostile environments.

An ecosystem surrounding the event

EmTech Italy relies on a wide network of partners: Intesa Sanpaolo and Takeda as main partners, along with companies and associations such as argenx, A2A, Bracco, Cisco, Enel, IBM, Poste Italiane, and Federchimica Assobiotec. The event also engages with Rome Technopole, the innovation ecosystem that connects universities, research centers, and businesses in Lazio: a sign of how Rome is striving to build its own identity as a technological hub, alongside the historical and artistic vocation that makes it famous worldwide.

Who should attend

The audience consists of professionals: managers, researchers, clinicians, investors, advanced students, and specialized journalists. Sessions are held in Italian and English with simultaneous translation, and access is by paid registration. This is not a popular outdoor festival, but a high-content international congress that has already proven its ability to attract over thirteen hundred participants in its debut.