He holds a PhD in Physics from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. He was Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, until 2002, and Visiting Research Staff at Princeton University between 2000 and 2002. In 2002 he moved to the ICTP as Senior Scientist in the Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics section. He is an expert in the computational modeling of materials at extreme conditions of pressure and temperature and he is one of the co-founders of the Quantum-Espresso project for the modelling of materials at the nanoscale. His papers have been cited more than 30,000 times (Google Scholar). He has organised more than 40 conferences and workshops and supervised more than 40 postgraduate and PhD students. He is a member of the editorial board of High-Pressure Research, of the scientific advisory board of Psi-k, and of the executive board of the “Lightsources for Americas, Asia, Africa, Middle-East, and Pacific” (LAAAMP) project. He is the Deputy Secretary General of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and Vice-President of the Trieste International Foundation. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016.