Marco Ercolani
Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino
Teacher
Marco Ercolani (Urbino, 1965) studied in Urbino until he obtained his scientific Maturità at the ‘L. Laurana’ High School in Urbino. Immediately afterwards, I moved to Bologna and enrolled at the University of Bologna, where I obtained a degree in Mathematics with a specialisation in applied mathematics. During my first years at university, it was the course on ‘Theory and Applications of Computing Machines’ that sparked my interest in computer science, at a time when I was still focused on mathematics and physics. Back then, we were still learning programming languages on terminals with green phosphor screens, and the first personal computers were just beginning to appear on the horizon. In the years following my graduation, I began my career as a teacher of Mathematics and Physics in secondary schools. During this period, I also obtained the two teaching qualifications in Mathematics and Physics, and Computer Science. At the same time, my professional experience took a turn towards software development, and I developed management software for a distribution company in Urbino. At the end of 2001, I passed a competitive selection process at the University of Urbino for the post of IT technician and, in a sudden turn of events, I returned to Urbino. At the end of 2001, I passed a competitive recruitment process at the University of Urbino to become an IT technician and, in a sudden turn of events, I returned to Urbino. The role, alongside its many responsibilities, gave me the opportunity to attend numerous training courses to gain a deeper understanding of the latest IT developments of those years: Windows Server 2000, Linux, Citrix and Oracle. At the same time, I began working with an online translation company, where I held the role of ICT Manager. It was also during these years that I began my association with the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino as a lecturer on the Interactive Systems course. I subsequently returned to teaching in September 2013 and taught at the ‘E. Mattei’ State Technical and Industrial Institute in Urbino as a lecturer in Computer Science and Systems and Networks. The years I spent at the ITIS were very fruitful in terms of gaining a deeper understanding of numerous topics related to networking. I am currently a lecturer on the courses in Interactive Systems, Interaction Design, Multimedia Languages and Fundamentals of Computer Science at the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino. I have been passionate about Open Source and Linux for over twenty years. I have been a member of the Italian Linux Society since 2005 and have taken part in the most recent editions of ESC-2024 and MERGE-it 2025, presenting multimedia projects developed as part of my academic courses. Over the past year, I have applied to join the FSFE community.
