Giorgia Pontetti, MSc

Giorgia Pontetti, MSc is the CEO at G & A Engineering and Ferrari Farm with a double engineering degree and a great love for nature and agriculture. She is an astronautical engineer with a farmer’s soul, who started working as an entrepreneur when she was at the university. She is interested in solving farming and food cultivation on Earth and Mars.

In 1996, Giorgia, together with her father, Founded G & A Engineering, where she has acted as CEO since. This small private company and private research centre is working in the Space and Defense sector. They do Special Equipment design in electronic, microelectronic, and micromechanic using 3D printing tech. They also contributed to an experiment happening in space, that is searching for dark-matter and antimatter.

In 2001, Giorgia began her own Freelance practice as an Engineer at the Giorgia Pontetti Engineering Firm (Studio di Ingegneria Giorgia Pontetti) where she offers services ranging from Interior and Architectural design to patent applications and drafting of research and development projects.

After Giorgia founded an engineering company with her father, she always had an idea of also creating a farm together. Afterall, she had a farmer’s soul. Then one day an American professor gave shape to her dream. He said, “When we colonize Mars, we’ll have to cultivate, and the only way to do this will be using hydroponic agriculture!”

Giorgia founded Ferrari Farm Societa Agricola, not far from Rome. She came to the idea of cultivating inside clean rooms, similar to satellite manufacturing and surgery rooms. She designed and manufactured a plant with a new generation approach, a fully computerized system able to cultivate without human interference. An electronic cultivation protocol commands and controls all the subsystems, each day and for the entire life of the plants. A totally artificial environment, fully LED lit, with LED lamps she built, allows cultivating where there isn’t any Sun, or where there is too much of it, answering also to space farming needs.

With this tool, we could cultivate everywhere, from the equator to the poles, indoor or outdoor, underground or aboveground, and on other planets as well. This technique allows higher production and quality, independently from the external environment, minimizing the water consumption and production of fresh vegetables, nickel free, solving also a health issue for the 20% of the world population which is allergic to nickel. Giorgia is passionate about solving this problem and continues with innovations and improvements.

Giorgia also introduced into the market a new hydroponic appliance able to autonomously cultivate directly in our kitchen. It is called the RobotFarm, and it recreates a midsummer sun and manages light, water, and nutrients all year, directly in your house. With RobotFarm, you can grow vegetables, herbs, and spices in 2 cultivation trays that can accommodate 25 plants each, or you can grow micro and baby vegetables inside the 2 cultivation trays.

Giorgia also developed Chef, a hydroponic vertical farm in containers, for small communities in cities, or smart supermarkets, to locally produce clean and fresh food.

The potential impacts on human life on Earth can be great if we could have farm land for everyone, everywhere.

The Chef container and RobotFarm are able to do everything by themselves! This could be a disruptive and unprecedented innovation with the aim of reducing hunger in the world.

Giorgia earned her Master’s Degree of Science in Astronautic Engineering in 2003 from the School of Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza Università di Roma. She earned her Master’s Degree of Science in Electronic Engineering with Microelectronics specialization in 2001 from the Universita degli studi Roma TRE.

She did training in the use of explosives, in Cybersecurity and Military Security, Space Cybersecurity, Naturalistic Engineering and Green Roof, and Cosmic Rays and Flight Activities.

Giorgia is a regular speaker and lecturer. Among others she lectured for Master of Advanced Systems for Communications and Satellite Navigation and Microelectronic Technologies for Space Applications at Università di Roma Tor Vergata. She lectured on Satellite: How Does It Work? at the European Center For Space Law, and about Space farming and hydroponic cultures & Microelectronic for space applications at the School of Aerospace Engineering, La Sapienza University, Rome.

Giorgia’s goal is to research feeding methods for expeditions to Mars, at the same time also to improve the quality of life on our planet. Her dream is to one day cultivate the “Space Tomato”.

Watch The Hydroponic Alternative at TEDxLUCCA. Watch Giorgia Pontetti – Ferrari Farm and Maker Faire 2018.

Read Giorgia Pontetti, the aerospace engineer who dreams of growing on the moon.

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