Laurea (Master) in Computer Science, University of Pisa (1983-1987). PhD Edinburgh University (1989-1992). Full professor in Computer Science at the University of Bologna since 2002. Research and academic positions previously held at Edinburgh University (Research Associate in Computer Science, 1993-1994), INRIA (Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique) (first as "charge' de recherche", then as "directeur de recherche", 1995-2002). Visiting professor at INRIA Rocquencourt, CWI Amsterdam, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Sendai University.
He has been Coordinator of the PhD Programme in Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Bologna (2019-2022), and Coordinator of the Degree Programme in "Informatica per il Management" (2013-2016).
He is head of the Research Team OLAS, a joint laboratory between the University of Bologna and INRIA (France) since 2022, and before that, of the Research Team FOCUS (2010-2022).
He has received: in 2012 the Outstanding Service Award from IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing); in 2013 the "LICS Test-of-Time Award" (this award recognizes a paper from the proceedings of the conference "Logics in Computer Science" from 20 years prior that has best met the "test of time" in term of impact); in 2020 the "CONCUR Test-of-Time Award" (in this case the award recognizes the impact, up to 2020, of a paper from the proceedings of the conference "Concurrency Theory" held in the period 1992-1995); in 2022 the PPDP "10 Year Most Influential Paper Award" (similar to the LICS award, in this case for the conference "Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming").
He is member of Academia Europaea (section Informatics) and of "Accademia delle Scienze di Bologna". He is "Fellow" of EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. Within IFIP, he is member of WG 2.2 "Formal description of Programming Concepts" , in which he has acted as the chairman between 2004 and 2011, and member of WG 1.8 "Concurrency Theory".
He is, or has been, member of the Editorial Board of the journals "TheoretiCS", "Logical Methods in Computer Science", "Acta Informatica", "Distributed Computing", "RAIRO - Theoretical Informatics and Applications", "Foundations and Trends in Programming Languages" "SN Computer Science". He has been member of the Council of the Italian Chapter of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science between 2003 and 2010. He has been member of the Steering Board of the Italian node of EIT ICT Labs (one of the first Knowledge and Innovation Communities set up by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology) 2011-2014, as representative of the University of Bologna. He has been member of the scientific committee for GRIN (the association grouping the Italian Computer Science academics), 2012-2015. He had been member of the Academic-Expert Committee of the Graduate School of "Natural and Engineering Sciences" of Verona University (2019-20).
He has acted as referee in various national funding agencies, and as expert in panels for academic positions, in various countries. He has taken part in a number of research projects, at the European or national level, (in UK, France, and Italy).
He has been member of the Program Committee and invited speaker in a number of international conferences, including POPL, LICS, CONCUR, MFPS, ETAPS, CSL.
He has given courses in about 15 international summer schools. He has supervised, or co-supervised, about 15 PhD thesis in Computer Science, and has been member of PhD committees in various European countries. He is the author of more than 130 papers in international journals and conference proceedings, and of 3 books on theoretical computer science (all published by Cambridge University Press).
