Alessandro S. Spinelli was born in Bergamo, Italy in 1966. He received the Laurea (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy. In 1995 he was a Visiting Scholar with the University of Tennessee Space Institute, Tullahoma, TN, where he worked on single-molecule detection in solution, and in 1996 he worked as a consultant with the Central Department of Research and Development, STMicroelectronics, Agrate Brianza, Italy.

He became Assistant Professor with the Politecnico di Milano in 1997 and was with the Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy as an Associate Professor of electronics in 1998.  In 2001 he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Grenoble, France. He is currently a Full Professor of electronics with the Politecnico di Milano.

He has co-authored more than 200 papers published in international journals or presented at international conferences as well as three international patents, and has served in the technical committees of the IEDM and IRPS conferences.  His main current research field is non-volatile memories, with emphasis on NAND Flash cell reliability.