About Me

I got my Master Degree in Physics at the Universita’ degli Studi di Milano on 1993 (110/110) with a thesis supervised by Prof. Marzio Giglio on the Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) using an interferometric and holographic technique. Later, I have been selected by CEO (Centro di Eccellenza Optoelettronica) in Firenze for an international fellowship  ‘Human Capital and Mobility’ granted by EU (1994-1995) to work on problems of perturbations induced by atmospheric turbulence on wavefronts related to ground-based astronomical observations to be carried out at the Observatoir de la Cote d’Azur (OCA), Laboratoire Lagrange. The work has been supervised by Prof. Julien Borgnino (OCA) and Prof.ssa Anna Consortini (UniFi). On 1995, in the same Institute, I obtained a Diplome des Etudes Avances (DEA) in “Imagerie et Haute Resolution Angulaire” equivalence. I successively obtained a PhD diplome with distinctions (1995-1998) with a research work on the optical turbulence forecast in application to the ground-based astronomy. The PhD research has been supervised by Prof. Jean Vernin (OCA, Nice, France) and Prof. Philippe Bougeault (Centre National des Recherches Meteorologiques - CNRM, Toulouse, France). In the context of the PhD thesis, I spent six months at the Centre National des Recherches Meteorologiques (CNRM) of Meteo France in Toulouse, France.

On 1999 I received the offer for two Post-Doc positions at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Istituto de Astronomia - Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico (D.F.). I chose UNAM because I had the opportunity to carry out a project on the optical turbulence forecast by taking advantage of observations from one of the most extended and complete site testing campaign ever done for the epoch in the astronomical field at which I participated too. In those years I dedicated myself also to research in topics of pure astrophysics such as jets from young stars, in particular from a numerical point of view. On 2001 I got a researcher staff position at UNAM. On late 2002 I have been offered a position at the Max-Planck Institute fur Astronomie (MPIA), Heidelberg, Germany for a two-fold very appealing tasks: from one side I was hired to carry on research on extrasolar planets with NACO at the VLT using the direct imaging technique (it was the epoch of the first surveys performed with NACO at the VLT). From the other side I took part in the international feasibility study of the ESO planet finder (at that epoch called CHEOPS, later on it became SPHERE) with studies on the role of the scintillation on extreme adaptive optics.

On 2005 I won a Marie Curie Excellence Grant (now ERC grant) to carry out a project (ForOT) funded by the EU with 1.2M€. The final goal of this action was to set-up an independent research group focused on the optical turbulence applied to the ground-based astronomy and to start a multidisciplinary research line. I selected INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri (OAA), Firenze, Italy as a host Institute. Since 2006 I have been appointed as Research Director (Dirigente di Ricerca) in INAF – OAA and, ever since, I am responsible of the Optical Turbulence research group. In parallel to my research activity, since 2015 I provide lessons/courses as Professor at the University of Florence at Master and/or PhD level.