Work experience

Dates

Nov 2008 to present

Occupation or position held

Change Manager within the ESA Frame Contract “Operations and Maintenance of the Earth Observation Payload Data Ground Segment (EO PDGS)”.

Service Evolution Manager within the ESA Frame Contract “Operations and Maintenance of the Earth Observation Payload Data Segment”.

Main activities and responsibilities

·         Management of the System Design and Sw Engineering teams (11 staff)

·         Management of 30 SW maintenance sub-contractors

·         Management of the Maintenance of 140 applications of the ESA EO PDGS

·         Responsible to meet Application Maintenance KPIs

·         Define and implement Change Management and Transfer To Operations processes

·         Spokesperson at the customer Joint Change Control Board (CCB)

·         Chairman of Operations CCB

·         Ensure smooth transition of new systems into operations

·         Maintain a Master Schedule of on-going and planned activities on all operational systems

·         Responsible for analyzing the Service Processes, Service Performance Indicators and identify improvements, both in terms of processes and in terms of HW/SW architecture, design and functionality

·         Coordination and Project Management of the Serco SW development projects

·         Definition of requirements for a corporate Document Management System

·         Contribution to the definition of the Technical Solution for the EOFC re-bid

·         Contribution to the “System AIV” technical proposal for the GALILEO FOC WP1 bid: definition of System AIV scope, approach, methods, team and definition of the WBS and detailed WPDs

As a part-time member of the Business Development Team, act as a Technical Solution Architect for several bids

Name and address of employer

Serco Ltd, via Sciadonna 24/26 – 00044 Frascati (Italy)

Type of business or sector

Space

Dates

Feb 2007 - Oct 2008

Occupation or position held

Galileo System AIV Engineer

Galileo System Design Engineer

Main activities and responsibilities

• Review of all documentation produced by the System Operations consortium, with focus on adequacy w.r.t the System AIV Team needs and expectations.
• Production of RIDs and participation to discussions with ESA and partners
• Definition of a System AIV Test Concept and related test management activities: Configuration Management, Anomaly Management, Test Roles, coordination aspects of a geographically distributed team, interface with support teams.
• Communication of System AIV test concept and approach to the Operations Team, explaining the type of Ops support necessary for the execution of System AIV tests
• Harmonization of OPS QA and CM practices with System AIV test needs
• Definition of Test Procedures template, document exchange, review and approval procedures
• Participation to Ops Keypoints of the Ground Mission Segments, reviewing data packages, raising and discussing RIDs
• Review Ground Control Segment (GCS) Operations Concept documents, suggesting appropriate contents
• Act as reference point for all Operations-related matters within the System AIV Team
• Management of sub-contractors
• Reviewing the GCS AIV documentation (AIV Plan, RVMs, VCD, Test Cases, Schedule, etc.) to ensure adequate verification of requirements, consistency with System-level AIV strategy and balanced allocation of verification activities among the different level: System, Segment and Element
• Monitoring all AIV activities of the contractor in charge of the GCS development and qualification, with the aim of ensuring that appropriate verification activities are conducted at lower level, complementary and not overlapping with system-level verification activities. Ensuring that verification activities allocated to segment-level are properly planned and conducted, in accordance with the expected verification level and method.
• Ensuring adequate dissemination of information internal to the SI&V team.
• Acting as reference point within the System AIV team for all matters related to GCS.
• Review GCS segment-level RVM against System AIV system-level RVM with the aim of optimizing the allocation of requirements verification among system-level, segment-level and element-level
• Review GCS design documents, with the aim of highlighting design choices with a detrimental impact on system operability during the system integration and verification phase and collecting technical information to be passed on to TAS-I subcontractors in charge of GCS-GMS integration.
• Review of the design and AIV documentation the CDR of every facility of the GCS. Raising and discussing RIDs
• Organisation of technical meetings
• Coordination of interactions between the various teams
• Participation to GCS Progress Meetings, presenting the needs of the SI&V team
• Review of Test Plan and Test Cases prepared by TAS-I subcontractors in the area of ground segment integration and verification
• Bookcaptain of the GCS-SS ICD (Ground Control Segment to Space Segment ICD)
• Bookcaptain of the GCSExtIRD (Ground Control Segment External Interfaces Requirements Document)
• Bookcaptain of the GCSSATMAN ICD (Ground Control Segment to Satellite Manufacturer ICD)
• Bookcaptain of the GCSESCC ICD (Ground Control Segment to External Satellite Control Centre ICD)
• Bookcaptain of the GCS-IOT ICD (Ground Control Segment to IOT Site ICD)
• Responsible for writing the parts of the System DDF and DJF related to Satellite Monitoring and Control, Constellation Deployment and Maintenance
• Review the GCS design and provide RIDs to ensure coherency with applicable requirements, System Design documents and Operations Concept
• Contribution to the design of the GALSEE (Galileo System Environment Emulator) facility: design of an SNPM-based method for exchanging test procedure progress information from the various processing elements to the central M&C element
• Author of the technical proposal for the ARTES-10 (IRIS) ESA programme (air-traffic-control communications over satellite links): critical review of customer requirements, definition of a number of possible architectures for the Ground Segment, architectural trade-off analysis based on Complexity, Cost, RAMS, Scalability.

Name and address of employer

Thales-Alenia Space, via Saccomuro 24, 00131 Roma (Italy)

Type of business or sector

Space

Dates

Dec 2000 - Jan 2007

Occupation or position held

Ground Control System Engineer

Spacecraft Operations Engineer

System Operations Engineer

Main activities and responsibilities

·         As Deputy Team Leader of the System Operations Team, responsible for selected system operations issues: development of system procedures, co-ordination of activities between the various facilities, planning, co-ordination and execution of the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) Operational System Validation

·         Analysis of the entire MSG System (Spacecraft, Central Facility, Ground Stations, Image Processing, Meteorological Products Production, Dissemination, Archiving, Data Collection Platforms).

·         Review of all high-level documentation (original system requirements, Operational Services Specifications, Reference Operations Plan) versus the actual implementation: identification of weaknesses, bottlenecks, unnecessary complications and proposals for improvements of several interfaces.

·         Coordination of all activities related to automated and manual system procedures: a system-level perspective was used to improve and harmonise the various system-level procedures and to train the operations personnel on the various levels of responsibility they are supposed to assume, in order to guarantee a common understanding of the way the system has to be operated. Experts of the various facilities were guided in the writing of the facility-level and system-level manual procedures.

·         Transmission of new operations management policies to all members of the operations team, from engineers through analysts to controllers.

·         Planning, coordination and execution of the MSG-2 Operational Scenarios, including rehearsals of all nominal and contingency system operations with 2 MSG spacecraft.

·         Act as central point of contact for all facility experts for all system-level issues.

·         Training to MSG and MTP controllers in the area of CF operations.

·         Responsible for the Service Chains tests for the MSG-2 Commissioning (mainly data dissemination tests). Test Plan and Test Specification prepared, with special attention to the design of effective measurement methods for Availability and Timeliness of the various products.

·         Data-Handling Subsystem and O-Board Software (OBSW) Spacecraft Operations Engineer for the MSG-1 spacecraft, from the OpsPrep phase through the Commissioning Phase to the Routine Ops phase (including on-call support).

·         MSG-1 Spacecraft Operations Team Leader.

·         Analysis of the spacecraft Flight Operations Manual, development and validation of nominal and contingency flight procedures, for Data-Handling H/W, OBSW and spacecraft-system-level. Development and validation of System Validation Test (SVT) specific procedures. Execution of SVTs.

·         Test Conductor for the MSG-1 spacecraft commissioning tests (platform and payload functionality): development of a Test Plan and Test Specifications, coordination of the execution of the tests:

·         Results and off-line analyses collected in the “MSG System Commissioning Platform Report”,

·         On-call Spacecraft Operations Engineer for the first phase of MSG-1 Routine Operations

·         Requirements definition for the MSG Central Facility (CF), with focus on “Special Spacecraft Support Functions” (s/w applications within the Control System that would help the creation of telecommands to and processing of telemetry from the various applications of the OBSW, like monitoring and reconfiguration, thermal control, satellite synchronisation, memory management, oversampling, on-board time-tag queue). Requirements analysis and descoping proposals.

·         Development of a stand-alone s/w tool to import OBSW patches (delivered by the spacecraft manufacturer) and create a sequence of commands for uploading to the spacecraft: the tool was used during MSG-1 SVT.

·         Support was provided throughout the entire procurement process, actively participating in technical discussions with the CF contractor to clarify operational needs and explain the spacecraft documentation to the team of s/w developers.

·         Development and execution of Acceptance Test Procedures, test of new s/w releases and NCR fixes.

·         Training of the operations team on the various functionality of the CF.

·         Support to Operational Scenarios (simulations): set-up of the spacecraft simulator for the different required scenarios (e.g. eclipses, manoeuvres, contingencies ,etc..)

·         Development of off-line tools for the Spacecraft Operations Team, e.g. a TC-List-Tool that imports Command History files from the CF and outputs TC-List files for import by the Spacecraft Manufacturer into the EGSE, for SVT execution: the tool was used to prepare all TC lists used for the MSG-2 SVT

Name and address of employer

EUMETSAT, Eumetsat-Allee 1, D-64295 Darmstadt (Germany)

Type of business or sector

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                       Occupation or position held

            Main activities and responsibilities

               Name and address of employer

  Type of business or sector

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                       Occupation or position held

            Main activities and responsibilities

               Name and address of employer

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                       Occupation or position held

            Main activities and responsibilities

               Name and address of employer

  Type of business or sector

Space

Apr 1997 – Dec 2000

Duty Scientist

Ground Segment AIV Engineer

Spacecraft Control System Project Manager

·         Team Leader of the Ground Segment Support Team for the launches of the ARTEMIS and SICRAL satellites, responsible for

o    Design and development of the ARTEMIS InControl Raw Telemetry Playback functionality.

o    Design and development of the ARTEMIS Telemetry Storage and Retrieval tool.

o    Ground-Segment-Support during the ARTEMIS SSVT and simulation campaign (ARTEMIS LEOP simulations).

·         SW Configuration Manager of the ARTEMIS development environment

·         Co-ordination of SW engineers to meet the Satellite Control System SW requirements, building and installing new SW releases; configuration control by means of the CVS tool.

·         Writing and testing Software Validation Test procedures, strong debugging and troubleshooting skills.

·         Spacecraft Control System Manager of the SATELCOM program (LEOP and commissioning services of EUTELSAT’ s Atlantic Bird – 1, digital TV broadcasting satellite)

·         Design and implementation of a gateway between Telespazio SCS for A-Bird LEOP and Eutelsat SCS for A-Bird GEO: TCP/IP – X.25 conversion and reprocessing of Ground Station Data Units.

·         Design and implementation of Telespazio SCS upgrade for Multi-Mission support.

·         Writing the Atlantic Bird-1 Spacecraft Control System User Requirements Document

·         Preparation of the Critical Design Review (CDR)

·         Spacecraft Control System Manager of the SICRAL satellite during the pre-operational phase (Launch – 3 months)

·         Project Manager of the SATELCOM Program (LEOP and commissioning services of EUTELSAT’ s Atlantic Bird – 1, digital TV broadcasting satellite

·         Near-real-time analysis of scientific payload data at the Beppo-SAX (low-earth-orbit Satellite for X-ray Astronomy) Scientific Operation Centre, Rome.

·         Detection of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) events, correlation with known sources, alerting optical ground-based telescopes for fast follow-up observations.

·         Satellite subsystems and payload monitoring. Image quality analysis, preliminary rectification and data manipulation. Customisation and Upgrading of the data-analysis software of the Scientific Operation Centre.

·         Work Element (WE) Manager for the EUCLID (European Collaboration for the Long-term in Defence) Research and Technology Project 9.8: “Satellite Surveillance”

o    WE#1: Evaluation of a Compact System for a Satellite Control Centre: new HW and SW technologies for the monitoring & control activities of a compact satellite control centre, possibly transportable.

·         WE:#2: New Technology for Integrated Fault Management in a Satellite Ground Segment Environment: Maximising the Availability and Reliability of critical subsystems in satellite control centre, Design of an Integrated Fault Management Subsystem in a Satellite Ground Segment.

Telespazio SpA, via Tiburtina 965, 00156 Roma (Italy)

  Space

 Apr 1996 – Feb 1997

 Sub-lieutenant of the Italian Army

 [Classified Information]

 Electronic Warfare Center

 Military

 Nov 1995 – Apr 1996

 Researcher

  Development of numerical simulation codes on VMS and UNIX platforms for N-body simulations and hydrodynamic simulations and their comparison with analytical stability criteria

 International Centre for Relativistic Astrophysics, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma (Italy)

 Research

            Education and training

Dates

1995

Title of qualification awarded

Laurea Degree in Physics (110/110)

Principal subjects/occupational skills covered

Gravitational Stability and Instability of Classical and Relativistic Self-gravitating Systems

Name and type of organisation providing education and training

University of Rome “La Sapienza”

Dates

1998

Title of qualification awarded

Course of Satellite Communication

Principal subjects/occupational skills covered

Satellite Communications

Name and type of organisation providing education and training

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                    Title of qualification awarded

         Principal subjects/occupational skills   
                                                      covered

  Name and type of organisation providing  
                               education and training

                                                         Dates

                    Title of qualification awarded

         Principal subjects/occupational skills   
                                                      covered

  Name and type of organisation providing  
                               education and training

                                                         Dates

                                 Title of qualification 
                                                    awarded

         Principal subjects/occupational  skills covered

  Name and type of organisation providing  
                               education and training

Telespazio SpA

1999

Introduction to G2

Course on Gensym’s G2 real-time expert system

Telespazio SpA

2010

ISO14000 Internal Auditor

ISO14000 Internal Auditor certification course

Serco SpA

2010

ITIL V3 Service Management- Foundation

ITIL V3 Service Management- Foundation Certification course

Serco SpA

Personal skills and competences

Mother tongue(s)

Italian

Other language(s)

English

Self-assessment

Fluent

Other language(s)

German

Self-assessment

Fair

Other language(s)

French

Self-assessment

Basic understanding

Social skills and competences

·         Experience in international, multi-cultural environment, gained though my work experience abroad

·         Team player

·         Sense of humour

Organisational skills and competences

·         Team management

·         Time management

·         Set-up of new projects and teams

·         Budget Control

·         Project Management

·         Technical Solution Architect for bids

Technical skills and competences

·         Satellite Control Center SW procurement, specification, design, development, validation, operation and Maintenance

·         Satellite Operations preparation and execution

·         Ground Segment SW procurement, specification, design, development, validation, operation and maintenance

·         System Operations

·         System Engineering

·         Configuration Management

·         Quality Assurance

·         Knowledge of ECSS standards and System Engineering standards

·         ITIL Service Management

Computer skills and competences

VBA, SQL, Microsoft Office suite

Artistic skills and competences

·         Piano and keyboards (studied 10 years, set-up own band, played on TV, turned down recording contract)

·         Writing (hobby)

Other skills and competences

Table tennis, swimming, hiking and trekking

Driving licence

Italian driving licence (car)

Additional information

Awards:

·         Awarded in 1998 with the “Bruno Rossi Prize” from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.

·         Awarded in 2001 an appreciation certificate from ESA Earth Observation Division and Director General for the contribution to the launch of the MSG-1 satellite

Publications:

·         “X-Ray Spectral Evolution of MKN421 in a very high state”, V. Torroni et al., Astrophysical  Letters & Communications, Vol.39, Proceedings of the Third Integral Work  shop: The Extreme Universe. 1999

·         “The Gamma Ray Burst X-Ray Counterpart Detection and Positioning at the BeppoSax Scien-tific Operations Center with the Extended Science Mode”, V. Torroni et al., Astrophysical Let-ters & Communications, Vol.39, Proceedings of the Third Integral Workshop: The Extreme Universe. 1999

·         “The Ground Segment Facilities of the BeppoSAX mission”, V. Torroni et al., Astrophysical Letters & Communications, Vol.39, Proceedings of the Third Integral Workshop: The Extreme Universe. 1999

·         “The BeppoSAX Mission Planning Component”, V. Torroni et al., Astrophysical Letters & Communications, Vol.39, Proceedings of the Third Integral Workshop: The Extreme Universe. 1999

·         “The BeppoSAX Scientific Operations Center”, V. Torroni et al., Astrophysical Letters & Communications, Vol.39, Proceedings of the Third Integral Workshop: The Extreme Universe. 1999

·         “On Atomic Ionization by Compression” V. Torroni, R. Ruffini, G. Spoliti, Il Nuovo Cimento B, 1997, Vol. 112 B, N.2-3

·         “A relativistic extended Fermi-Thomas-Like equation for a self-gravitating system of fermions”, A.Merloni, R.Ruffini, V.Torroni, Il Nuovo Cimento Vol.113 B, N.2., 255-263, Feb 1998.

·         ‘Jeans Mass and White Dwarf Theory”:   V. Torroni,  proceedings of the 4th Italian-Korean meeting of Relativistic Astrophysics, held at the laboratories of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Gran Sasso, July 9th 7-13 1996