I was born in Rome in 1954. I started my scientific career with INFN in 1982 at Frascati National Labs, taking part in particle physics experiments at accelerators and working for the development of particle detectors. Later on I have been involved in particle physics research without accelerators (nucleon decay, high energy cosmic rays, atmospheric neutrinos) and contributed to the first activities of Gran Sasso National Labs with the MACRO experiment. In 1990 I moved to Milan, where I joined the ATLAS experiment at the LHC accelerator at CERN, while continuing his actviities in astroparticle physics at Gran Sasso Labs. Later I also joined the ICARUS experiment. The work in cosmic ray physics triggered the interest in physics simulations by means of Monte Carlo techniques, with particular attention to the aspects related to hadronic interactions. In this respect I started to collaborate with the FLUKA authors, contributing to give rise to the international FLUKA collaborations. In the last fifteen years I have been involved in medical applications of nuclear and particle physics, particularly in the field of hadrontherapy, where I am active in both development of Montecarlo simulations and research on techniques for in-vivo monitoring of therapeutic treatments. I was Director of INFN section of Milan from 2006 to 2012. I served as coordinator of the INFN Technical Scientific Committee and since September 2018 I am the Director of the Trento In