Hello! I’m Mirko

→ Engineering Team Lead at IOTA Foundation (since Jun 2024).
→ Applied Research Engineer at IOTA Foundation (Dec 2022 - May 2024).
→ PhD in Law, Science and Technology (MSCA Grant), Universities of Madrid, Bologna, Turin (Apr 2023).
→ MSc in Information Science for Management, University of Bologna (2019).
→ BSc in Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Palermo (2017).
→ Born in Palermo, Sicily (1995).

Passionate about Distributed Ledger Technologies, with expertise in designing and developing protocols for smart contract implementation and optimization. I hold a PhD in Law, Science, and Technology with a thesis title: '’Decentralized Systems for the Protection and Portability of Personal Data.’‘

Current Projects

I currently lead the VM&Language within the IOTA Foundation’s R&D Department → GitHub repo.

This team is currently focused on all aspects related to the Move smart contract language. We maintain the Rust-based source code responsible for the compilation and execution of Move code, as well as the integration of these components into the IOTA DLT protocol.
Additionally, we collaborate with other teams to develop Move smart contracts for implementing core DLT functionalities and building decentralized applications on top of the blockchain.
Looking ahead, we aim to explore the expansion of Move language features and potentially work with new smart contract languages.

Blog Posts

The problem with (permissionless) decentralization
Why should the current personal data protection and portability paradigm be changed?
A DecentDIS? Find out more about Decentralized Data Intermediation Services

Main Research Outputs

[PhD] Zichichi Mirko, Rodríguez-Doncel Victor, Ferretti Stefano, Decentralized Systems for the Protection and Portability of Personal Data, University of Madrid - University of Bologna. April 2023, Madrid, Spain.
[J3] Zichichi Mirko, Ferretti Stefano, D'Angelo Gabriele, Rodríguez-Doncel Victor Data governance through a multi-DLT architecture in view of the GDPR, Cluster Computing, Springer. July 2022.
[J8] Zichichi Mirko, Rodríguez-Doncel Victor Encoding of Media Value Chain Processes Through Blockchains and MPEG-21 Smart Contracts for Media, IEEE MultiMedia, IEEE. August 2023.

Past Affiliations

Ontology Engineering Group (OEG), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
MPEG Ad-hoc Group on Smart Contracts for Media, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29
Analysis of Networks and Simulation Research Group (AnaNSi), University of Bologna
Legal Blockchain Lab, University of Bologna

Contacts

IOTA Foundation
Pappelallee 78/79
10437 Berlin, Germany

Emails:
name = mirko
surname = zichichi
email_0 = {name.surname}@iota.org
email_1 = {name.surname}@pm.me

username = miker83z
email_2 = {username}@proton.me
email_3 = {username}@gmail.com