Associate Professors

Francesco Longo was born in Crotone on February the 8th 1979. He took his degree in Mechanical Engineering, summa cum Laude, in October 2002 from the University of Calabria. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Calabria in January 2006. He is currently Associate Professor at the Mechanical Department of University of Calabria. 

He has served as Principal Investigator and Scientific Responsible for many research projects (many of them strongly related to the maritime sector and marine ports: HABITAT, SMARTRAIN, TESEDRAS, GREEVALUES, SIMON, to cite a few). As part of these research projects, he has actively cooperated with the port of Gioia Tauro and other national/international ports.

He is Director of the Modeling & Simulation Center – Laboratory of Enterprise Solutions (MSC-LES), a laboratory operating at the Mechanical Department of University of Calabria. The MSC-LES is member organization (as one of the two Italian centers) of the MS&Net (McLeod Modeling & Simulation Network). He is serving as CEO of CAL-TEK, a spin-off company of University of Calabria, where he has supervised the design, development and commercialization of the CAL-TEK Ship Bridge Simulator (currently the only SME in Italy selling on the market this type of product). He is also serving as Scientific Director for the Calabrian Innovation Logistic Pole (a public-private institution whose activities are connected with the port of Gioia Tauro).

 He has published more than 200 scientific papers on international conferences and journals participating as speaker and chair-man to different international conferences.

He actively cooperates with many research institutions all over the world. Among others University of Genoa, Kennedy Space Center, NASA (Cape Canaveral, USA), University of Ottawa (Canada), Rutgers University (The State University of New Jersey).

He is co-Editor in Chief of the International Journal: Simulation, Transaction of the society for Modeling & Simulation International. During the last years, he has strongly supported the organization of International Conferences in the area of harbors and maritime (e.g. HMS, The International Conference on Harbor, Maritime and Multimodal Logistics Modeling & Simulation; Win-Log, The International Workshop on Innovation in Logistics). Starting from 2003 he worked on private research projects involving manufacturing and logistics systems operating in Italy. He has acquired experiences in consulting for Business Process Re-engineering and Logistics in different areas.

Longo, F., Nicoletti, L. & Padovano, A. 2017, "Smart operators in industry 4.0: A human-centered approach to enhance operators’ capabilities and competencies within the new smart factory context", Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 113, pp. 144-159.

Longo, F., Nicoletti, L. & Padovano, A. 2019, "Emergency preparedness in industrial plants: A forward-looking solution based on industry 4.0 enabling technologies", Computers in Industry, vol. 105, pp. 99-122.

Longo, F., Nicoletti, L. & Padovano, A. 2017, "Smart operators in industry 4.0: A human-centered approach to enhance operators’ capabilities and competencies within the new smart factory context", Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 113, pp. 144-159.

Longo, F., Nicoletti, L., Padovano, A., d'Atri, G. & Forte, M. 2019, "Blockchain-enabled supply chain: An experimental study", Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 136, pp. 57-69.

Longo, F. 2010, "Design and integration of the containers inspection activities in the container terminal operations", International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 125, no. 2, pp. 272-283.

Cimino, A., Longo, F. & Mirabelli, G. 2009, "A multimeasure-based methodology for the ergonomic effective design of manufacturing system workstations", International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 447-455.

Longo, F. & Mirabelli, G. 2008, "An advanced supply chain management tool based on modeling and simulation", Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 570-588.

• Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality, AI and Digital Twin applications in Industry 4.0


• Smart Operators within manufacturing systems and industry


• Modeling & Simulation for production systems, supply chains design and management.


• Advanced decision support systems and training solutions for marine ports.


• Simulation tools for training procedures in complex environment (also by using 3D real time simulation).


• Supply chain and marine ports security. The attention is focalized on developing integrated decision support system for the supply chain security. Several studies has been carried out in the field of marine terminal security and containers inspection procedures.

Several topics are currently available. Interested students are suggested to drop by during office hours.