Baracchi Bonvicini was born in London and grew up in Italy. He graduated in History at the University of Bologna. He reported the war in Kosovo for the Italian editorial group Quotidiano Nazionale from Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro. He also reported from Israel and Palestine the second Intifada. He wrote for the Italian newspaper Libero from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, following the US invasion of Afghanistan. In 2003 he published Sognando Gerusalemme resulting from his reporting from Israel and Palestine in 2002.
Together with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing he founded Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy that they presented on November 2009 at the European Parliament in Brussels together with twenty-two rectors and presidents from the partner universities. In 2011, Baracchi Bonvicini and Giscard d’Estaing received the medal from the Polish university Jagiellonian University for "their contribution to the European academic community by founding the institute". The medal was first awarded in 1997 to mark the 600th anniversary of the university's re-foundation to Pope John Paul II. In September 2012, during the negotiations regarding the EU budget for 2014–2020, Baracchi Bonvicini and Giscard d’Estaing together with the former prime minister of SpainFelipe González Márquez, jointly signed the appeal asking EU member states to increase the budget for research and innovation. The appeal was sent to all European prime ministers and head of governments published by numerous European newspapers including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El País, Il Sole 24 Ore and The Irish Times.
REIsearch
In 2016 Baracchi Bonvicini promoted together with Massimo Marchiori the set-up of REIsearch, a non-profit initiative co-funded by the European Commission, Nokia, Elsevier, and other Atomium partners. The aim is to connect researchers and policy makers on topics linked to scientific research in order to promote evidence-based policy making. After the launch Jean-Claude Juncker declared: "Innovation and new scientific discoveries are improving people's lives and making our economy more competitive. Science should be open and freed from its traditional ivory tower; to be discussed, submitted to critique and fed with new perspectives. That's why I warmly welcome efforts such as the REIsearch initiative to inspire fresh ideas about how to solve some of our society's most pressing problems". In the first three years of activity REIsearch has focused on specific subject areas such as , in collaboration with European Commission's DG Sante, and , in collaboration with DG Connect, reaching hundreds of thousands of European citizens with its media campaigns and surveys.
AI4People
Under the auspices of Atomium-EISMD, in 2018 Baracchi Bonvicini and Luciano Floridi promoted AI4People, a multi-stakeholder forum bringing together key actors interested in shaping the social impact of new applications of AI, such academics, civil society organisations and the founding members Audi, Elsevier, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, Intesa SanPaolo, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft. As result of the first year of activity AI4People presented at the European Parliament the “AI4People’s Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society: Opportunities, Risks, Principles, and Recommendations” during the “” opened By Tony Blair. This work served as inspiration to the European Commission and guided the identification of the 7 Key Requirements for a Trustworthy AI presented by the Commission in April 2019.
