[Webinar] Inspiration Valley - Michele De Cillis

​For the upcoming webinar organized in collaboration between Silicon Valley Study Tour and Lead The Future Mentorship, Michele De Cillis will share his experience as a Silicon Valley Study Tour Alumno and Ex Co-Founder @Polyneta.

​Michele’s journey begins in Andria, where he took his first steps into software development during high school — competing in Arduino contests and helping build an online “tombola” that handled more than 1,000 simultaneous users.

​Before university, he spent nearly three years as a mobile and frontend software engineer working on web platforms — including integrating an AR service that let users try products before buying — and contributing to websites for Fortune 500 brands.

​In 2022, Michele enrolled in a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the Università degli Studi di Milano, motivated by his curiosity about the academic world, while continuing to freelance on the side.

​During his degree, he broadened his horizons through an Erasmus+ exchange at Université Paris-Saclay in France, where he studied machine learning and NLP and co-authored a research project identifying biomarkers for ALS from RNA-Seq data.

​In 2025, Michele took on a research internship at the IT University of Copenhagen, where he worked on measuring polarization in large-scale directed social networks.

​In 2025 Michele won the University Startup Challenge – Milan with his team, earning a spot in the Fondazione UNIMI incubator.

​From that win, Polyneta was born: a project turning public data into business intelligence, bridging municipalities and service providers.

​The team disbanded and the project closed while still at an early stage — Michele has since completed his Bachelor's degree, and that experience is a big part of what he'll be sharing during the webinar.

​Learn more about Michele's journey during our webinar on September 10th.