I am an astronomer working at the Bologna Observatory (INAF), Italy, and I like to work mainly on resolved stellar populations, in an attempt to understand how stellar systems form and evolve with time. During my Ph.D. Thesis work, that was partially done at the ESO in Garching, Germany, I have been focussing mostly on omega Centauri. More recently, I started working also on globular clusters, dwarf galaxies and open clusters.

Another series of projects that I am following concerns the development of automatic software that can help in deriving chemical abundances in stars (e.g. DAOSPEC). I have also been involved in the Gaia Satellite DPAC (Data Analysis and Processing Consortium), working as the manager of the Development Unit dedicated to the ground based observations for the absolute flux calibration (DU13), within the Coordination Unit devoted to the photometric data processing (CU5).