I was born in Rome in 1967, I studied Physics at the Sapienza University of Rome, graduating in 1991. After the INFN scholarship I undertook my PhD in Pavia.
I was hired as a university researcher in Roma Tre at the end of 1995 and this has remained my home since then.
I am currently a full professor in the scientific disciplinary sector FIS/04 (Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics) and Director of the INFN Section of Roma Tre.
I have been married since 2021 and have two children, now adults.
I have worked in small (WA92, HARP, MICE), medium (NOMAD), and large (ATLAS) experiments. I dealt with both hardware and data analysis.
I don’t consider myself an expert in either field, I’m passionate about finding the solution to problems, whether hardware or software, but I also like to keep an overview of things. With the acquired maturity I am less and less expert in anything, but I realize that the problem solving skills and the overall vision acquired allow me to at least partially compensate for an increasingly less trained memory and to still succeed, when time allows me allows it, to put less into technical aspects, including innovative ones. Above all, time is the missing resource, and my two roles, as teacher and director, absorb a lot of it.
These are apparently activities far from my initial passion for research understood as putting my hands directly on the apparatus or software. To my surprise, however, I discovered that teaching, and then also managerial activity (at least in the INFN!), can be very rewarding. It is as if long training in the critical processing of information and problem solving finally found application, not in the study of physical processes but in the management of human capital, to be trained or helped to give the best in the workplace.
I also understood, precisely through a bit of management training, but also a lot through the experience of INFN mentoring, that the first human capital that you need to know how to manage is your own. In terms of professional development, certainly, but above all in terms of resources.
We must know how to manage our time, reserving the right space for loved ones but also for ourselves, for what excites us and gratifies us. It is not time wasted, stolen from family or work, it is energy gained, which makes us more balanced, more resilient, more solid, able to give more. I put this space in my diary, whether small or large, possibly every day.
Sometimes a family or work emergency takes over and takes it away from me, but if I hadn’t reserved it, that same emergency would have burdened an already full agenda, impacting both the things I had to do and my balance.
When I manage to defend it (or get it at unlikely times) I go to a wonderful meadow, with a grove nearby, with wind, sun, rain, heat, cold, and archery. The arrows don’t lie, their dispersion accurately measures my physical and psychological condition, and even when training or a race doesn’t give satisfactory results on a sporting level, I come out as new, ready to face anything.