
Full astronomer at INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova; he has published more than 700 papers, 350 of which on refereed journals and 77 of them as first author. He is one of the most cited Italian astronomers. He is known at international level as one of the major experts in the chemical composition of stellar populations and globular clusters. In the last decades he had an important role in the studies of exosolar planets. He led the construction of the first entirely Italian high resolution spectrograph for Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. He was Instrument Scientist for EPICS and for the Italian part of SPHERE, the planet finders for E-ELT and VLT. He was member of the ESO and INAF Scientific Committees.