Simone Di Leo

Simone Di Leo is an Assistant Professor of Management Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome, specifically within the Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering "Antonio Ruberti" (DIAG). His academic career focuses on applying advanced quantitative methods to evaluate public services and regulated industries, with particular emphasis on efficiency and productivity analysis.

Dr. Di Leo earned his BSc in Software Engineering, followed by an MSc in Management Engineering, and completed his PhD Doctor Europeus cum laude in Industrial and Management Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome. His doctoral thesis, "Performance evaluation of public services with nonparametric frontiers," established the foundation for his research in non-parametric efficiency analysis. He has maintained strong international connections, including a four-month visiting research period at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium in 2023.

His primary research interests center around efficiency analysis, business data analysis, micro-data analysis, and regulation and public policy analysis, with specialization in non-parametric frontiers methodology. Dr. Di Leo applies these techniques across diverse sectors including waste management, electricity markets, natural gas markets, municipal solid waste services, and higher education institutions. His work bridges theoretical methodological developments with practical applications in regulated industries and public services, often focusing on sustainability challenges and data quality issues in large longitudinal datasets.

Dr. Di Leo's research portfolio demonstrates a consistent progression toward addressing complex sustainability challenges through advanced quantitative methods. His recent publications reveal a strong trend toward applying Data Envelopment Analysis and related techniques to environmental challenges, particularly waste management and circular economy initiatives at both municipal and European levels. He maintains significant research activity in higher education efficiency, examining university rankings and resource allocation, while also contributing to methodological advances in data quality assessment and error detection. This multidisciplinary approach positions his work at the intersection of operations research, public policy, and sustainability science.

Dr. Di Leo serves on the editorial board of the international journal Information Processing & Management and has contributed to significant research projects funded by institutions such as ARERA (the Italian energy, network and environment regulatory Authority). He was part of the ETER Project (now part of the European Higher Education Sector Observatory, HESO), where he was responsible for collection and quality control of data from Italian, Maltese, Irish, and Great Britain institutions.

As an educator, Dr. Di Leo teaches "Management Tools for Business Data Analysis" for the Master's Degree in Management Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome. He actively supervises Master's theses on topics related to energy retail markets, consumer perception, and data-driven policy analysis, emphasizing student-driven research topics and requiring English-language thesis writing. His supervision philosophy encourages students to propose their own thesis topics, believing that working on self-selected subjects produces better outcomes.