Gennaro Russo is presently the senior manager for Space and Defense at DAC, the Campania Aerospace District. He is a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics, participates in a number of technical committees of the International Astronautical Federation, and is co-founder and director of the Center for Near Space of the Italian Institute for the Future, committed to the development of the Expansion of Humanity in Space.

He co-founded Trans-Tech, an SME devoted to technology transfer and disruptive concepts design. He is co-conceiver and project manager of the HYPLANE project, a hypersonic suborbital spaceplane. In 2013, he co-founded Space Renaissance Italia assuming the role of president up to May 2015.

He was a director of CIRA, the Italian Aerospace Research Center, for some 25 years managing space related programs, projects and facilities, mostly devoted to space transportation and reentry. He led in particular the PRORA-USV program, playing the role of flight director for balloon-dropped transonic-supersonic flight tests. He was designer of the 70MW SCIROCCO Plasma Wind Tunnel for duplicating reentry aerothermodynamics conditions.

At the beginning of his career, he worked for about ten years with the Microgravity Research Team led by Luigi G. Napolitano at University of Naples, designing, preparing and analyzing experiments executed on board the ESA Spacelab.
Graduated at University Federico II of Naples, he holds a Doctoral Degree in Aerospace Engineering obtained at University Sapienza of Rome.

Author of more than 150 papers presented at national and international congresses and/or published in international scientific journals.