Favorite food: Spezzatino, an Italian dish
Favorite music: Modern music in general
Favorite movies: 'A Beautiful Mind' (American)
'Il Nome della Rosa' (Italian)
Favorite place in the Netherlands: Delft
Favorite place in the world: Rhodos, Greece
Best part about living in The Netherlands: Dutch people are open
Worst part about living in The Netherlands: Opening time of the shops is a little bit too short during the summer. They could be open for one hour more. The day is so long.
Ettore Lorenzo Firrao is one of the few students who left the warm, sunny south to study for a while in the cold, rainy north of our continent, went back to the south and then, surprisingly most of us would say, returned to the colder areas to stay for a longer time.
Lorenzo, as most of his colleagues know him, was born in Florence, the Italian 'City of God' as Dante called it. Although surrounded by great artistic monuments such as works of da Vinci and Michelangelo, he studied Electronic Engineering, earning a B.A. in the field of Radio Frequency and then receiving his Master's degree from the University of Florence. While working toward's his Master's degree, he spent six months at the UT as an exchange student of a Socrates/Erasmus program.
Asked why he chose to come to the Netherlands for part of his Master's, he said the traditional Dutch electronic industry attracted him most. And why the UT? 'It was one of the universities I knew from home,' says Lorenzo 'and though there were a lot of places I could have gone to, this was the place where the program I wanted to work on existed.' So he came, studies for a period and then went home to defend his Master's thesis, and came back to the UT because he had been offered the opportunity to pursue a PhD.
His current research concentrates on the area of mobile phones. He explains, 'We want to make something to have a longer talking-time.'
As to leaving his family and coming alone to Enschede, it was difficult in the beginning. However, Lorenzo was lucky that he already had a lot of friends and acquaintances to spend his spare time with. In addition, he learned pretty quickly how to cook pasta, one of his favorite dishes, so everything turn out to be okay.
Rita Schertzer
Ettore Lorenzo Firrao
