Francesca Pellegrino is Full Professor of Air and Space Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Messina, Italy (a Corporate Partner of the ICAO TRAINAIR PLUS Program), and Director of the University Centre for Transportation Studies (CUST Euromed).

She is also the Director of two Master’s programmes in aviation: “Airline Management and Regulation of the Aviation Industry” and “Aviation: Sustainable Development Goals”, the last organised in cooperation with ICAO. She participated as an invited speaker at conferences and workshops organised by ICAO.

Since 2012, CUST Euromed has also cooperated with EUROCONTROL’s Safety Unit in the field of Just Culture with regard to legal aspects. Professor Pellegrino published the monograph “The Just Culture Principles in Aviation Law: Towards a Safety-Oriented Approach”, with Springer in 2019.

She also participated to the PRIN research project on drones, “ATM, Drones and D.A.N.T.E.”. She contributed a chapter titled “The International Regulatory Framework on Drones” to the recent book “Drones in the Digital European Sky” (Springer, 2025, eds M.P. Rizzo, F. Franchina), which brings together the outcomes of this research.

On 17 July 2026, Professor Pellegrino chaired a panel at the 3rd Florence Aviation Regulation Conference, organised by the Florence School of Regulation (Transport area) of the European University Institute, in cooperation with the International Institute of Air and Space Law of Leiden University, and will also participate in ICAO ICAN2026.