Francesca Rossi (born December 7, 1962, in Ancona, Italy) is an Italian computer scientist in the field of artificial intelligence. Associated with the University of Padua and the University of Pisa, she currently works at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, USA, as an IBM Fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader at IBM Research.

Francesca Rossi received her bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from the University of Pisa in 1986, followed by a PhD in computer science from the same university in 1993. After completing her studies, she remained at the University of Pisa as an assistant professor until 1998. She then moved to the University of Padova where she served as an associate professor until 2001 and a full professor until 2018. In 2014–2015, Rossi took a sabbatical as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University. In 2015, she joined IBM Research at the T.J. Watson IBM Research Center in New York, USA, as a distinguished researcher. In 2020, she became an executive and was appointed as an IBM Fellow.^[10]

Francesca Rossi's research interests lie in the field of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on constraint programming, combinatorial optimization, preference modeling, reasoning and aggregation, knowledge representation, constrained reinforcement learning, ethically aligned AI, neuro-symbolic AI, and cognitive AI architectures. In the past, she has also worked on language semantics, graph grammars, logic programming, and Petri nets. Rossi is also interested in understanding how to embed ethical principles into decision-making systems, to support either individuals or groups make more ethical decisions. Specific topics of interest include detecting bias, defining distances between preference models, as well as embedding ethical behavioral constraints into reinforcement learning models. Most recently, her research interest is in leveraging cognitive theories of human reasoning and decision making, such as the thinking fast and slow theory of Daniel Kahneman, to advance AI's capabilities.

Francesca Rossi has published over 230 articles in international journals and conferences on these topics.^[11] She has also edited over 20 volumes, including the Handbook of Constraint Programming. She co-authored the book "A Short Introduction to Preferences: Between Artificial Intelligence and Social Choice", published in the Synthesis Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning by Morgan & Claypool Publishers in July 2011. Additionally, she authored the book "Il confine del futuro – Possiamo fidarci dell'Intelligenza Artificiale?", published by Feltrinelli for the Italian market.

She served as president of the Association for Constraint Programming from 2003 to 2007, president of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) from 2013 to 2015, and president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) from 2022 to 2024. Additionally, she served as general chair of the AAAI conference in 2020 and general chair of the ACM/AAAI Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society held in Montreal in August 2023.

She was elected a Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) in 2008 and a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 2012. Her recognitions also include the Association for Constraint Programming distinguished service award in 2010, a Radcliffe Fellowship from 2014 to 2015, and the Women in Tech association's Tecnovisionarie award in the Artificial Intelligence, AI ethics category in 2021.

Francesca is a leader in the field of AI ethics through AI research projects focused on embedding human values in AI systems and through numerous roles in this area. At IBM, she has served as the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader since 2017 and as co-chair of the IBM AI ethics board since 2019. Her intergovernmental and policy contributions include serving as a member of the European Commission High Level Expert Group on AI from 2018 to 2019, co-chairing the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on AI for Humanity from 2020 to 2022, and co-chairing the OECD expert group on AI futures in 2023. She has also served as a Steering Committee member and expert for the Global Partnership on AI since 2020. Her other leadership and advisory roles include serving on the scientific advisory board of the Future of Life Institute since 2015, as a board member of the Partnership on AI since 2016, and as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for the Ethics of AI at Oxford University since 2023. In conference leadership, she was the program co-chair for the 1st AAAI/ACM conference on AI Ethics and Society in 2018 and has served on its steering committee since 2018, and she also co-chaired the IJCAI 2022 special track on AI for good.

Francesca has delivered four TEDx talks on topics related to artificial intelligence. In 2015, she gave the talks "Sustainable AI" at TEDx Osnabruck University, "Ethical Artificial Intelligence" at TEDx Ghent, and "Convivere con l’Intelligenza Artificiale" at TEDx Lake Como. In 2022, she presented "Macchine che aiutano a pensare" at TEDx Reggio Emilia.

Francesca has been interviewed by several prominent media outlets, including D di Repubblica (May 2021), The Nikkei (January 2018 and June 2021), Insider: Inside the Technology (September 2021), Fortune (December 2021), The Financial Times (September 2018), The Economist (June 2016), The Washington Post (May 2015), the Wall Street Journal (May 2015), Sydney Morning Herald (February 2015), and Euronews (January 2015). She has also written pieces for the media, including "How IBM is Working Towards a Fairer AI" for the Harvard Business Review in November 2020.