Gian Paolo Bassi brings more than 20 years of experience in 3D, CAD, and PLM application development to Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks. As vice president of research and development, Gian Paolo is responsible for charting the company’s future product and technology strategies. He was most recently the founder and CTO of RIWEBB where he oversaw the development of new technologies for the Mechanical and Architectural Design Automation industry, collaborating with companies like Dassault Systèmes. Prior to RIWEBB, Gian Paolo served as vice president and CTO of ImpactXoft, where he led the team developing functional modeling and collaboration applications which are now part of CATIA. In this position, he co-invented three of his five patents in functional modeling. He also served in the R&D organizations of companies like Computervision and think3. Gian Paolo holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bologna.