Enrico Zio received the MSc degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 1991 and in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano and in probabilistic risk assessment at MIT in 1996 and 1998, respectively. He is currently full professor at the Centre for research on Risk and Crises (CRC) of Ecole de Mines, ParisTech, PSL University, France, and full professor and President of the Alumni Association at Politecnico di Milano. He is distinguished guest professor and adjunct professor at various universities around the world, and invited lecturer at various Master and PhD Programs in Italy and abroad. He is the past chairman of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA) and present President of the International Association of Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (IAPSAM).
In 2020, he has been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, one the world's most prestigious research awards across all scientific disciplines. The Award is given to outstandingly qualified researchers and future leaders from science-related fields (but very seldom awarded to engineers!). The Award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date, to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. Professor Zio has been selected for the Award in light of being a World leading scientist in Risk and Resilience Assessment, Safety Analysis and Reliability Engineering of complex systems and infrastructures, in particular for energy applications. He has been one of the pioneers in using artificial intelligence (such as neural networks) and genetic algorithms in reliability engineering and risk assessment, solving key problems related to the safety and reliability of critical systems such as those used in the nuclear, oil and gas, transportation industries. He has promoted the use of computational modeling within various international initiatives.
His research focuses on the modeling of the failure-repair-maintenance behavior of components and complex systems, for the analysis of their reliability, maintainability, prognostics, safety, vulnerability, resilience and security characteristics, and on the development and use of Monte Carlo simulation methods, artificial intelligence techniques and optimization heuristics. He is author and co-author of seven books and more than 500 papers on international journals, Chairman and Co-Chairman of several international Conferences, associate editor of several international journals and referee of more than 20.