Robot Selvaggio

Appointment bookable from 2 March 2026

Screening of the film Wild Robot (2024), animated film by Chris Sanders

Guests of the evening: Federico Cella (journalist and member of the STEP Scientific Committee), Alessandra Sciutti, head of the CONTACT – CogNiTive Architecture for Collaborative Technologies group at the IIT (Italian Institute of Technology).

The screening of “Robot Selvaggio” will transport us to a world where technology, nature and emotions intertwine, telling the story of a robot grappling with self-discovery and the complexities of its surroundings. Chris Sanders' animated film offers profound insights into the relationship between artificial and living beings, adaptation and the role of innovation in an increasingly hybrid future.

As always, the discussion will conclude with an open debate, giving the audience the opportunity to participate with questions and reflections on the topics addressed by the guests and the film.

Debate with

Massimo Temporelli

Physicist and science communicator

Massimo Temporelli has a degree in physics and worked for 10 years as a curator at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. Today, he is an entrepreneur in digital fabrication, a consultant and keynote speaker on innovation, with a particular focus on the relationship between humans and technology and all the anthropological and sociological repercussions that this relationship entails and will entail.

He is president and co-founder of TheFabLab, a digital fabrication laboratory based in Milan. He was a TEDx speaker in 2012 (Florence) and 2020 (Turin). He has made popular science television programmes for Sky and Rai. He is the author and voice of the famous podcast F***ing Genius (Storielibere.fm). He writes for Wired and Millionaire magazines and his latest book is “Noi siamo tecnologia” (We Are Technology) (Mondadori, Strade blu, 2021). In 2016, he won the “Federico Faggin Innovation Award” and has been an ambassador for AIRC since 2017.

Federico Cella

Journalist

Federico Cella has a degree in philosophy and has been a journalist for over 30 years, first in print and then online. For the last 20 years, he has been writing for Corriere della Sera, where he currently holds the position of editorial manager of Corriere Login. He has always been passionate about nerd culture, digital technology and education, and has always sought to combine his passions with his work in a virtuous way. In the 1990s, he created one of the first Italian web agencies, Kirin Web Design. Since 2008, he has been teaching journalism at university and is currently a lecturer in digital writing on the “Walter Tobagi” Master's course at the University of Milan. He runs a course on digital skills for RCS Academy. He has created a number of innovative projects for Corriere della Sera, including Corriere360, dedicated to immersive video reportage, and CampBus, a free project aimed at supporting Italian schools in the digital sphere.

Alessandra Sciutti

Head of the CONTACT group at the IT

Alessandra Sciutti, head of the CONTACT – CogNiTive Architecture for Collaborative Technologies group. With a degree in Bioengineering and a PhD in Humanoid Technologies, she spent two periods abroad, first at the Robotics Lab of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and then at the Emergent Robotics Laboratory of Osaka University. In 2018, she was awarded the ERC wHiSPER Starting Grant (www.whisperproject.eu), focused on investigating joint perception between humans and robots. Specifically, the aim of her research is to investigate the sensory and motor mechanisms underlying mutual understanding in human-human and human-robot interaction. In 2022, she was included in Fortune Italia's 40 Under 40 list.