I work at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore as Branch Manager for NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the main instrument of the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). My grade is AURA (American Universities for Research in Astronomy) Observatory Scientist. I am also Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University.
My main expertise is in the concept, development and operations of novel astronomical instrumentation. Before JWST/NIRCam, I was instrument scientist for the infrared channel of the WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope; I have also conceived SPACE, a Dark Energy mission selected by the European Space Agency for the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan (now part of the Euclid mission). I am currently Instrument PI of the ATLAS Probe satellite, under study for the next 2020 Decadal Survey.
For ground based telescopes, I am Principal Investigator of OCTOCAM, the next facility instrument for the 8m Gemini South telescope and the prime camera-spectrograph for LSST followup, and of the SAMOS spectrograph for the 4m SOAR telescope also in Chile, the first multi-slit spectrograph designed for an adaptive optics system. In the past I have build the MAX camera for the UKIRT telescope in Hawaii.
My main research field is Star Formation, the Orion Nebula in particular. I have led two Hubble Treasury Programs on the Orion Nebula Cluster. The first one (GO10246), awarded with 104 orbits of HST time in Cycle 13 to study the Orion Nebula Cluster has produced one of the most beautiful images ever made by Hubble (at least according to National Geographics). The science data products for this project are avaialble on the STScI MAST archive here. The data produced by the second Treasury Program (GO13826) are still being analyzed but have already produced a couple of HST press releases, i.e. HST2017-11 on the discovery of a runaway star and HST2018-03 on the discovery of very-low mass companions.
Before joining AURA, I worked for the European Space Agency as Astronomer assigned to the Hubble program (1999-2005); earlier in my career, I have been staff astronomer at Max Planck Institut fuer Astronomie, Heidelberg (1995-1999) and Research Astronomer at Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino (1987-2005). I hold a Summa cum Laude degree in Physics and a PhD in Astronomy from University of Torino.