Personal Details

Date of Birth: 19/12/1968

Nationality / status: Italian / married

Address: Toulouse (FR)

Professional experiences

Being part of the Vega Group

• From Oct. 2005: I’m working for ThalesAlenia Space France, located in Toulouse (previously European Satellite Navigation Industries - ESNIS), on the Giove Mission Segment (7 Meuros), the early experimentation segment of the Galileo Navigation Satellite System (http://www.giove.esa.int).

The GIOVE Mission Segment consists of a world wide network of Galileo Experimental Sensor Stations (GESSs) and the GIOVE Processing Centre (GPC) located at Noordwijk (NL). The main experimentation objectives are the Navigation message generation, the on board and ground clock assessment, the Orbits modelling and the operations of the payload through the GPC.

I work as the Technical Responsible of the infrastructure and experimentation on the first two experimental satellites (GIOVE-A and GIOVE-B). The GIOVE Mission Segment consists of a world wide Galileo Experimental Sensor Stations (GESSs) and the GIOVE Processing Centre (GPC) located at Noordwijk (NL). Main tasks include:

§  Coordination of the Operations of the Giove Processing Centre (3 operators)

§  Technical follow-up, documentation review and coordination of the teams involved in the infrastructure development (mainly Indra Espacio, Thales Alenia Space, Science Systems, Space Engineering)

§  Experimentation follow-up and coordination with Operations (experimenters from GMV, Istituto Metrologico Nazionale (INRIM), ThalesAlenia Space France).

§  Technical definition and follow up of a facility for evaluating the quality of the Navigation Message uploaded by GPC to GIOVE-A/B through a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

• 2003 to 2004: I worked on the Galileo System Test Bed (GSTB-V1), project in support to the algorithms risk mitigation of the ground segment of the Galileo Satellite Navigation System. The facility was aimed to simulate the Galileo system performances (Integrity, Orbit Determination & Time Synchronisation) on the basis of data from the GPS satellites.

§  from Feb. 2004, at ESTEC - the ESA technical centre - in the Netherlands, I took part to the team in charge of the operations of the Galileo System Test Bed V1. 

§  I contributed to the System Integration at Alcatel in Toulouse where I took part to the interfaces verification.

o   2002: at Eutelsat in Paris. I’ve been involved in the development of the contingency procedures of commercial telecommunication satellites (HotBird) under nominal and backup configuration.

2001 to 2002: being part of Altran Consulting Group I worked at Alenia Spazio, Turin (Italy). I worked as a Flight Operation Engineer on Herschel/Plank satellites and the Columbus Module that is the European contribution to the ISS (International Space Station). On the Columbus module I designed contingency procedures while on the Herschel/Plank I contributed to the writing of the Operation Manual.

2000 to 2001: Marconi - Mobile Division - R&D department located in Florence (Italy). I’ve been part of the team involved in the development of the Trans European Trunked RAdio (TETRA).

o    I designed and debugged RF (Radio Frequency) board for a 400 Mhz receiver and LNA (Linear Network Amplifier).

o    Use of laboratory instrumentation for TETRA and GSM modulation analyses (Spectrum analysers, Generators, Vector Analysers, Power Meters, ...).

1996 to 1997: military service served as an Officer at the Italian Navy Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications (G. Vallauri - Mariteleradar) in Livorno (Italy).

1991 to 1996: collaboration with Pietro Giuntini, Pisa (Italy), the family company where I covered both sales and technical support roles.

Academic record

Dec. 2005: I completed a 1 year Master Course in 'Satellite Navigation and Related Applications' at the Politecnico of Turin (http://didattica.polito.it/master/navigation/). The course is dedicated to the Space and User segments of Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSS), the system timing and the integration of GNSS services and local/regional augmentation systems.

The Master thesis has been carried out at the Centro Ricerche FIAT (CRF) in Turin and concerned in the development of an algorithm for car-to-car Relative Positioning augmentation system.

Apr. 2000: Masters degree in Electronic Engineering - Awarded 110/110 – University of Pisa. Courses mainly oriented to the electronics for telecommunications and digital signal processing.

The thesis concerned in the design and realization of a Test & Measurement system which evaluates the electromechanical performances of microactuators based on Smart Materials (conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes). Part of the study was carried out at the Santa Fe Science and Technology in Santa Fe (U.S.). Supervising tutor: Prof. Danilo De Rossi.

High School diploma in Physics - I.T.I.S. “Leonardo da Vinci “ – Pisa. Final mark 60/60.

I.T. knowledge

o    Operating systems:  Windows, Linux, Unix (Sun Solaris)

o    Languages: C#, C++, Visual Basic.

o    Applications: Matlab, LabView, Orcad, Office.

o    Mark up Languages / Internet technologies: XML, XSD, XSLT, CSS, XHTML, Javascript, j2me.

Specialising Courses / Publications

o    “European Navigation Conference – ENC-GNSS 2008”, Toulouse (France) in April 2008 (http://www.toulousespaceshow.eu/enc-gnss08/). Papers accepted:

§  “GIOVE-M Processing Centre modernization and Operations” and

§  “GIOVE Navigation Message end to end close loop performance”

o    “13th Ka and Broadband Communications Conference” organized by International Institute of Communications, Turin (Italy) in September 2007 (http://www.kaconf.org/2007/). Presentation of the paper: "The Role of GIOVE Satellites in the Galileo in-Orbit Validation".

o    “GALILEO One Year in Orbit Workshop", ESTEC (The Netherlands) in March 2007. Presentation of the paper: "GIOVE Mission Segment - GPC Operations".

o    “12^th Tyrrenian International Workshop on Digital Communications” on Software Radio Technologies and Services, Isola d’Elba (Italy) in September 2000. Marconi Communications presented new TETRA receivers.

o    “1^st Annual International IEEE-EMBS Conference on Microtechnologies in Biology”, Lyon, in October 2000. Two proceedings from thesis work: “Micro syringe based fabrication of high resolution organic structures for bioengineering applications” and “Micro fabricated electroactive polymer benders for cell handling”

Languages

Italian mother tongue. Fluent in English. Fluent in French.