A scientist and public intellectual, Stefano Mancuso is among the world’s leading authorities engaged in researching and communicating new discoveries about plants: as intelligent and sensitive creatures capable of choosing, learning, and remembering. A professor at the University of Florence and a full professor at the Georgofili Academy, he directs the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology, with offices in Florence, Kitakyushu, Bonn and Paris.

Mancuso was the first Italian scientist to be invited in 2010 as a speaker at a TED Global held in Oxford. His talk was viewed more than 1.4 million times on the TED website alone.

In 2014 he founded PNAT, a start-up at the University of Florence to create plant-inspired technology. In 2016 he won the Austrian Ministry of Science and Technology’s “Wissenschaftbuck des Jahres” award for the best science paper of the year.

As a writer, he made his debut in 2013 by publishing the award-winning best-seller Verde brillante [Brilliant Green] with Giunti. In 2018, his book Plant Revolution won the 2018 Galileo Prize, the most prestigious prize for scientific non-fiction.

This was followed with Laterza by L‘incredibile viaggio delle piante [The Incredible Journeys of Plants] (2018), La Nazione delle Piante [A Nation of Plants] (2019) winner of the Capalbio Prize and the Earth Prize, and La pianta del mondo [A Plant of the World] (2021) winner of the Pozzale Luigi Russo Prize.In 2022 he published with Einaudi La tribù degli alberi [The Tribe of Trees], his first book of fiction. His books are translated into 27 languages.

In 2022, he was awarded the Fiorino d’Oro, the highest award of the City of Florence, and was appointed scientific director of the newly formed Foundation for the Future of Cities.