Fabio Paternò is a Research Director at C.N.R.-ISTI in Pisa where he founded and leads the Laboratory on Human Interfaces in Information Systems.

His research activity has mainly been carried out in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field, with the goal of introducing computational support to improve usability, accessibility, and user experience for all in the various possible contexts of use by proposing relevant languages, models, design spaces, tools, and applications. For this purpose, he has continuously led numerous interdisciplinary international or national projects for several years. In his research work, he has always aimed at deepening and intertwining both theoretical and practical innovative aspects, with attention to possible social implications. His main current research interests are in the areas of Interactive Smart Spaces, Accessibility, End-User Development, Human-centered Artificial Intelligence, and Human-Robot Interaction

He has published about three hundred papers in refereed international conferences or journals.

He has been the scientific coordinator of several EU projects ( MEFISTO, GUITARE, EUD-Net, CAMELEON, OPEN, PETAL), and one of the main investigators in several others (such as ADVISES, MAUSE, SIMILAR, SERVFACE, SERENOA, SMARCOS, PersonAAL , WADCHER). He is currently the coordinator of the National Research Project (PRIN) EUD4GreenSmartHome , the CNR Project SERENI and the project on Automatic Accessibility Validation funded by the PNRR

He has served in various leadership roles for conferences, including Papers Co-Chair of the ACM CHI 2000 conference , IFIP INTERACT 2003 and IFIP INTERACT 2005. He chaired or co-chaired various other events including Mobile HCI 2002 , ACM EICS 2011 conference , Ambient Intelligence 2012, ACM EICS 2014 Conference , Mobile HCI 2016, IS-EUD 2017, MUM 2019 co-chair of ACM Intelligent User Interfaces 2020 , and is general co-chair of the ACM Intelligent User Interfaces 2025 conference

He represents Italy in the IFIP Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction, and has been the chair of IFIP WG 2.7/13.4 on User Interface Engineering and a member of WG 13.2 and WG 13.3, and chaired the ACM SIGCHI Italy (from 2000 to 2004). He was appointed ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2009, was awarded the IFIP TC13 Pioneer in Human-Computer Interaction in 2014, ACM Distinguished Speaker in 2015, IFIP Fellow in 2020, he was elected into the SIGCHI Academy in 2021, and ACM Distinguished Speaker again in 2023

He has taught in various universities in Italy and abroad, given tutorials in several international conferences and talks in various research centers, and currently teaches user interface design and usability evaluation at University of Pisa.

He has supervised the work of many young researchers (master, PhD, and post-doc students) from various countries, more than twenty have become full-time professors or researchers in various universities and research centers throughout Europe. He has also been a member of the PhD juries for universities for more than 30 PhDs in a dozen or so different nations.

He has been a reviewer for about twenty research funding agencies spread all over the world.

His research work has also been funded by various companies. He was co-chair of the W3C Working Group on Model-based User Interfaces