Francesco Petruccione is an Italian-born South African physicist, Professor of Physics at Stellenbosch University, and Director of the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS). Born in Genoa in 1961, he studied physics at the University of Freiburg, where he completed his doctorate in 1988 and Habilitation in 1994.

Petruccione joined the University of KwaZulu-Natal as Professor of Theoretical Physics in 2004. He later held the South African Research Chair in Quantum Information Processing and Communication Technology and served as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Big Data and Informatics. He moved to Stellenbosch University in 2022 and was appointed Director of NITheCS in May 2024.

He is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, and a Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy. In 2025, he contributed to a record-breaking satellite-based quantum key distribution link between South Africa and China.