Every year the Linux User Group Bozen-Bolzano-Bulsan assigns the “South Tyrol Free Software Award” (SFS Award). The award is given to a person who contributed to the introduction of the culture of Free Software in the Province of Bolzano.
The Free Software Award 2022 was delivered to Rosella Gennari.
Laudatio SFS Award 2022
This year’s SFS Award winner is neither from a private company nor public administration, but rather works in academia.
Her field of study is human-machine interaction via cyber-physical devices, which has often led her into schools where she has been involved in both the experimentation of new teaching tools and the training of teachers themselves. With them, she promotes the basic concepts of computer science as a transversal discipline, and does so through ‘physical’ computation, with open languages and open hardware. She always finds ways to force (obviously in a positive way) users to be conscious users of technology, understanding the general principles, mechanisms and logic behind digital technologies and not just their exclusive consumption.
At university, on the other hand, her courses aim to unleash the creative and design side of students. Among the tools she makes available to them there are always open hardware as a basis, open source as programming languages and libraries, open data for everything that can be the subject of system integration.
In order to encourage this kind of interest outside the academic sphere as well, she helped opening the Bitz, the FABLAB at the University of Bozen/Bolzano, and worked to make it accessible to the public, especially to teachers and schools.
By now, many of you will have realised that the winner of this year’s SFS Award is… Rosella Gennari.
