Nicola Ciulli has always been fascinated by disciplines characterized by mathematical or at least scientific rigor; however, he studied engineering, and he’s still trying to detox from both. From an early age, he developed a passion for computer science, sparked by a humble Commodore Vic-20. On that machine, he spent his elementary and middle school years writing code and then copying it onto paper to save it, since he didn’t have a tape unit, let alone a floppy drive. Writing hundreds of lines of code only to lose it every time the Vic was turned off, like a kind of digital mandala, was one of his first enlightening lessons on the impermanence of things. Over the years, more capable platforms arrived (an Atari with an actual floppy drive, then some x86 PCs), and that’s when his exploration began, first driven by curiosity, later shaped by method and vision.
With a degree in telecommunications engineering, he learned to appreciate the beauty of the complex systems that populate this technological domain and became fascinated by the creative power of software, which brings many of these systems to life.
After an unmissable “playful” period (also known as research and development) of a few years at Consorzio Pisa Ricerche, Nicola and the other founders launched Nextworks at a time when the group’s know-how began to hold real market value. Twenty years ago, their first consulting project for Marconi Communications, a historic provider of telecommunications technologies, was the proof: from that moment on, ideas no longer remained prototypes in the lab but began running as a GMPLS stack on deployed equipment, in the telephone network of what was then Telecom Italia.
From the very start of the Nextworks journey, Nicola has overseen research and development activities, through both co-funded projects and specialized industrial consulting. This has led him to hold institutional roles that bring not only technology but also a broad, structured vision of the digital future into the company, for example, as a member of the Governing Board of the 5G and later 6G Industry Association, and as national president of CNA Digitale. Despite these responsibilities, he always tries to stay close to “technical things.” Even today, in his scarce free time, he secretly has a blast writing code in Python or C/C++.
