Emanuela Colombo has achieved a PhD in Energy Engineering and a Nuclear Engineering MSc at Politecnico di Milano where she is currently Full Professor at the Department of Energy. She served as Rector’s Delegate to Cooperation and Development from 2005 to 2022, now appointed as Rector’s Delegate to Science Diplomacy since 2023. Since 2012 she works as Chair holder of the UNESCO CHAIR in Energy for Sustainable Development and since 2019 a member of the Royal Academy of Oversee Science (Belgio). She has been appointed by the Italian Conference of the Rectors as the representative of the national academic system within the National Council for Cooperation and Development and national representative in the AU-EU High level policy Dialogue by the Italian Ministry of Higher Education and Research. She is in the board of the Italian Higher Education with Africa Foundation She worked for Ansaldo, ABB and Fluent Inc. (now ANSYS-FLUENT). In 2001 she moved to an academic career where she work on the Energy-Environment-Development nexus, energy planning and integrated modelling assessment. She is author of more than 130 papers in ISI or Scopus1 and co-author of the book “Renewable Energy for Unleashing Sustainable Development” by Springer. She was the scientific coordinator of 4 European Projects on Green Innovation (Egypt), Sustainable Energy Engineering (Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia), Water Energy, Food nexus (Egypt), Energy services in refugee camps (Lebanon, Somalia, RCA and Colombia). She is a scientific coordinator in the LEAP-RE HORIZON call, flagship for the AU-EU cooperation.