Biography

Building a safer foundation for AI.

Francesco Pinto researches the security, safety, and reliability of intelligent systems. His work connects rigorous machine-learning research with the practical challenges of deploying agents and multimodal models responsibly.

01

Biography

Francesco's research asks what it takes for AI systems to remain dependable beyond the laboratory. He develops methods to assess and strengthen systems facing uncertainty, shifting data, privacy constraints, and adversarial behaviour.

His recent work focuses on the safety and security of AI agents and multimodal models, with a broader interest in trustworthy machine learning. Across research and applied settings, he works on evaluation, red teaming, guardrails, robustness, calibration, and privacy-preserving learning.

02

Selected journey

  1. 2025 - present

    DeepMind

    Research on safe and secure AI agents.

  2. 2024 - 2025

    University of Chicago

    Research fellowship focused on multimodal agent safety.

  3. 2024

    Meta

    Research on multimodal evaluation for alignment and safety.

  4. 2023

    Google

    Research on data memorization in vision-language models.

  5. 2022 - 2023

    ETH Zurich

    Research visit on privacy-preserving learning in low-data regimes.

  6. 2021 - 2022

    FiveAI / Bosch

    Research on reliable machine learning for autonomous systems.

  7. 2020

    Frontier Development Lab

    Research programme with Trilium Technologies and the European Space Agency on uncertainty estimation for space safety.

  8. 2019 - 2024

    University of Oxford

    DPhil research in uncertainty-aware and privacy-preserving deep learning.

  9. 2018 - 2019

    Politecnico di Milano

    Academic training in machine learning and intelligent systems.

03

A few things about me

Piano & classical music

I play the piano, with a particular love for classical music.

Favourite composers include Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Stravinsky, Monteverdi, Brahms, Godowsky, Clementi, Maderna, Ligeti, Nyman, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Bach, De Simone, Penderecki, Poulenc, Villa-Lobos, Richard Strauss, and Boccherini.

Hiking & nature

I love hiking and exploring the outdoors, especially across Switzerland.

Favourite books

Some favourites: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera), Forbidden Colors (Yukio Mishima), Haunted (Chuck Palahniuk), The Mysterious Shop (Dino Buzzati), The Plague (Albert Camus), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), Neither Eve Nor Adam (Amelie Nothomb), and The Ego and Its Own (Max Stirner), and In Praise of Shadows (Junichiro Tanizaki).

Contemporary listening

Some artists I return to include Maddie Ashman, Glomari, Susanne Sundfor, Alessio Biondi, Beach House, David Bowie, Lucio Corsi, Safia Nolin, Aldous Harding, Fleet Foxes, Anohni, Museo Rosenbach, Azure, Patrick Watson, Phoebe Bridgers, and Vampire Weekend.