Adjunct professor at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna since the academic year 2021/2022 (when the new Degree in Mechatronics was introduced), he has been dealing with automatic machines design, research and development for 13 years.
His research interests include the development of innovative machines, their materials, and the energy production plant, with a constant attention to the environmental sustainability.
Education
Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering (2 years program - Laurea Magistrale) at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna (2011). Final grade: 110/110 cum laude.
Doctor of Philosophy Degree (Ph.D.) in Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna (2018) with excellent marks on all the assessment criteria (originality, research methodology, results quality, knowledge of the research topic).
Executive Master in Technology Innovation Management at Alma Mater Studiorum University – Bologna Business School (2019) with excellent marks (A/A+).
Academic career
Adjunct Professor at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna since the academic year 2021/2022 and member of the Board of the Mechatronics Degree.
In the academic years 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 he was elected as Member of the Mechanical Engineering Board and of the Engineering Faculty Board at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna and he worked on the implementation of the degrees reform according to D.M. 270/04.
Teaching
After achieving a position for academic teaching at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, he has been teaching the courses of Laboratory of Mechanics 1 and of Laboratory of Mechanics 2 at the Mechatronics Degree course. The latter is the first degree program of the Engineering school which is based in Imola. He was the first professor of this new courses, therefore he contributed to the course syllabus creation.
He regularly organizes visits at top level companies (also to show the machines he designed during his working activity) and organizes seminars at University with experts from top level companies. The aim of these activities is to show the students the close bond between the academic theory and its best industrial applications.
Yearly invited speaker at Bachelor of Engineering courses at the University of Edinburgh (UK) (ranked #15 in QS World Rankings 2023) and at Mechanical, Chemical and Processes, Energetic Engineering Master’s Degree courses at the University of Bologna.
He visited many Universities abroad (Princeton, Yale, Columbia University, NYU, MIT, Harvard, Brown, Pittsburgh, Georgetown University Washington DC, Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, Utrecht, Ulm, Catholic University of Central Africa Yaoundé) to discover the best teaching practices.
Research
He studied the effect of metal temperature on the short contact time (milliseconds) adhesion of molten poly(ethylene terephthalate) and published the first scientific experimental research on this topic. He also created a new methodology to assess the adhesion forces.
He analyzed the effects of the heat treatment on properties of metal alloys, in particular aluminum alloys (mechanical properties, research done for Ferrari SpA) and molds steels (mechanical properties, dimensional stability and corrosion resistance, research done for SACMI).
During a period of research at the University of Edinburgh (UK), as member of the team led by the Director of the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Center, he found innovative and more efficient technical solutions to implement the technology of carbon capture in the fossil fuels power plants. He has always been interested in the development of sustainable power plants.
He published articles in international and Italian journals and presented at conferences. He is co-inventor of an international patent and contributed to the realization of many international patents on automatic machines. He co-supervised several master’s and bachelor’s degree theses in Mechanical Engineering.
Other activities
He has been an employee of SACMI Imola S.C. since 2011. At the end of 2023 he was appointed as Training Development Manager at the newborn SACMI Corporate Academy.
From 2019 to 2023, he hold the role of Mechanical Design Manager at the poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) preform injection molding Business Unit (more than 150 plants installed worldwide). He designed, with his team and together with his colleagues, a new range of machines with a significant improvement in performances in terms of productivity and reliability according to the principles of 4.0. industry. A new preforms post mold cooling system and an integrated preform vision system, both patented, were introduced in the machines. This vision system, together with the introduction of new sensors, allows the control of the process, of the product and the predictive maintenance of machine components subject to wear. In the years 2017 and 2018 he spent 15 months at Pet Projecta (Maser), a company of SACMI Group based in the province of Treviso, an area in which there are strong competences on the injection molding machines and the poly(ethylene terephthalate) injection molding.
From 2014 to 2017, for SACMI he coordinated the research and development of the first industrial prototype of poly(ethylene terephthalate) preform compression molding machine. This technology allows a huge saving of polymer and energy for each preform. In the last two decades about 600 patents were deposited on this technology by a few big multinational corporations from USA, Japan and Europe. SACMI was the first company to succeed in designing and manufacturing a plant (tested for months in continuous production by one of the biggest European bottlers). Moreover, this prototype was integrated in the production line with another automatic machine to produce bottles through preforms heating and stretch blow molding, therefore allowing another important energy saving. On this technology he deposited a patent about the pneumatic handling of a molten poly(ethylene terephthalate) cylinder and he developed his doctoral dissertation. Moreover, to follow and support tests on prototypes, he stayed more than two years in productive plants, mainly near Parma at the plant of an Italian multinational corporation that produces poly(ethylene terephthalate) preforms and then near Pescara at the plant of an Italian multinational corporation that produces poly(ethylene terephthalate) preforms and bottles, which were filled and labelled in the same plant.
In his first years at SACMI he worked on the mechanical design and research and development of automatic machines to produce poly(ethylene terephthalate) bottles through preforms heating and stretch blow molding. He stayed for some months at technical consultants’ offices in the province of Pordenone near the Veneto region, an area where there is one of the main districts of this technology. He dealt with mechanical structural calculations on new machines frames and components with finite element method. Moreover, he designed new systems for new functionalities such as a system to find and discard a single preform with defects in a continuous preform flow at a productivity rate of 80000 preforms per hour. Another remarkable activity he did was the optimization of the air- and water-cooling systems of the preforms heating oven.
