Curriculum Vitae

Please find a compact and potentially out-of-date CV below.
A reasonably up-to-date more detailed version is available here.

I was born in Montebelluna, a small town in North-Eastern Italy, about 50 km from both Venezia and Padova, on 23 January 1975.

In 1993 I enrolled in Physics at the University of Padova, where in 1998 I started to major in Astronomy. Between October 1998 and July 2000 I worked on an MSc Thesis designing the GAIA Galaxy Survey, a proposal to carry out observations of external galaxies with GAIA, a scientific satellite mission being planned at the time by the European Space Agency (ESA) and eventually launched in 2013. My MSc Thesis work was started at Copenhagen Astronomical Observatory, now part of the Niels Bohr Institute of Copenhagen University under the supervision of Erik Høg (October 1998 - September 1999) and later completed at Asiago Astrophysical Observatory under the supervision of Pier Luigi Bernacca (October 1999 - July 2000). On 17 July 2000 I defended my thesis and received an MSc in Physics from the University of Padova.

From November 2000 to October 2003 I've been employed as a PhD student at the Center of Studies and Activities for Space (CISAS) "Giuseppe Colombo" and at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Padova, under the supervision of Alberto Franceschini. My research project focused on mid-infrared data analysis and instrumentation. More specifically, I've been working on the development and application of the LARI Method, a powerful and reliable technique for the reduction and analysis of imaging data obtained with ISOCAM and ISOPHOT, the two cameras onboard the ISO satellite, jointly developed by ESA, NASA and ISAS, that has operated from 1995 to 1998. overcoming the problems caused by cosmic ray hits and transient behaviour of the detectors. On 21 May 2004 I received a PhD in Space Science and Technology. from the University of Padova. At the same time, in collaboration with people involved in the related consortia, I've been dealing with simulations for future infrared satellite missions (SIRTF/Spitzer, ASTRO-F/Akari, FIRST/Herschel, NGST/JWST) in order to evaluate the results to be expected from these in terms of instrumental performance and related scientific yield.

From November 2003 to September 2005 I've been employed as a Post Doctoral Research Associate within the Astrophysics Group at Imperial College London, working on a variety of infrared/sub-mm extragalactic survey and follow-up projects exploiting both ground-based and space-based facilities and on Observation Planning and Software Development for the SPIRE instrument on board the Herschel satellite.

In September 2005 I moved back to the Department of Astronomy of the University of Padova, where I've continued work on the Herschel/SPIRE Ground Segment while developing the Multi-Wavelength Data Fusion to support the science exploitation of Herschel extragalactic surveys.

In November 2011 I moved to Cape Town, South Africa, AKA The Mother City, where I started as a Senior Research Fellow (2011-2017) and moved on to become a Senior Research Scientist (2017-2019) and eventually eResearch Director and Astroinformatics Research Professor (2019-2022) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where I also served as facility director for the ilifu data intensive research cloud computing facility. I then joined the University Cape Town (UCT) as eResearch Director and Astroinformatics Research Professor (September 2022 - date). Since moving to South Africa I have been funded by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) as part of their Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship Program, by the European Commission Research Executive Agency as part of their FP7-SPACE program, by the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) and by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). Over the years I have led the South African participation to the Herschel Extragalactic Legacy Project (HELP), leading the HELP Multi-Wavelength Data Fusion and serving as HELP Project Scientist, and started the HELP/IDIA Panchromatic Research Project (HIPPO). As UCT eResearch Director, I work closely with the Research Office, Information and Communication Technology Services and Libraries to deliver services and provide support in the areas of High Performance Computing and Research Data Management.

A little more about these topics can be found here.


CV NIRC Research Papers Talks Meetings Schools Presentations
Data Fusion HIPPO VOICE ELAIS LARI SMOG SOS IDL myidllib malavita simstuff

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