Paolo Serafini was Professor of Operations Research in the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics, University of Udine, Italy for more than 25 years until his retirement in 2016. After the degree in Electronic Engineering, he worked for a few years at FIAT, Grandi Motori, Turin. He joined  the Faculty of Sciences, University of Udine, in 1978 where he became Associate Professor in 1985 and Full Professor in 1990. In the academic year 1995-96, he was Visiting Professor at  Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and in 1980, he was Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has been a researcher at the International Center for Mechanical Sciences (CISM), Udine since 1975 and was appointed Scientific Editor of the CISM–Springer Lecture Notes series in 2005. His scientific interests have dealt mainly with the development of mathematical models for resource optimization and, in recent years, with the mathematics of electoral systems as well. He is the author of about 80 papers and four books and has also edited six books.