Curriculum

MSc in hydraulic engineering at the University of Bologna and associate professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Ferrara. He obtained the Italian National Scientific Habilitation (ASN) as Full Professor in Applied Physics and Nuclear Engineering in June 2021.

He lectures Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer and Acoustics at the School of Architecture, Industrial Design and Innovation Design. He carried out an Erasmus Staff Teaching Mobility period at the Institute For Sustainable Energy, University of Malta (2014), and a three-month academic visit at the University of Nottingham (2015).

His research topics are focused in developing and applying numerical models, especially CFD, for solving heat and mass transfer phenomena. He is author of several technical papers on international journals and conferences, and reviewer for international journals focused on renewable energy and heat transfer. He was rewarded with the best paper award of International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies (University Oxford Press, 2011), and was invited as Keynote Speaker at the International Heat Transfer Symposium and Heat Powered Cycle Conference (Nottingham, 2016).

In 1994/95 he took part at the European project EUREKA-EU487 ENVINET-INFOSYSTEM, a project focused on a model-based information and decision support system, planning and managing water resources at catchment basin scale. In 2005/06 he upgraded the former results in the European project W-SAHaRA-EVK1-CT-1999-00041, focused on Stochastic Analysis of Well-Head Protection and Risk Assessment. He was manager and scientific chair of several scientific researches at UNIFE and Bocconi University, e.g. about use of blast furnace syngas in Brayton cycles, strategies for soil remediation in brownfields, thermal exploitation of water pipelines, and thermal benefits of tiled vented roofs in Mediterranean area.

He was/is scientific leader of UNIFE’s partnership in the following competitive project

-       European project LIFE HEROTILE (High Energy savings in building cooling by ROof TILEs shape optimization toward a better above sheathing ventilation)

-       European project H2020 IDEAS (Novel building Integration Designs for increased Efficiencies in Advanced Climatically Tunable Renewable Energy Systems)

-       regional project POR-FESR 2014-2020 HEGOS (Nuove pompe di calore per l'Harvesting EnerGeticO in Smart buildings)

-       regional project POR-FESR 2014-2020 CLIWAX (Materiali a cambio di fase per l’harvesting energetico)

He was awarded from the European Community of the Seal of Excellence for the proposal n.794118 submitted in the Horizon 2020’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions : Coupled Flat GHE Investigation of a dual air and ground source heat pump coupled with a novel Flat-Panel Ground Heat Exchanger for energy harvesting in smart buildings.

He was member of the Management Committee in the European TUD COST Action TU0802 NeCoE-PCM (Next generation cost effective phase change materials for increased energy efficiency in renewable energy systems in buildings), and in the Action TU1401 RELY (Renewable energy and landscape quality).

He is founder and leader of the Laboratory to Advance in Ground heat exchange (LAG), where lab and field studies are carried out on the geothermal energy. LAG belongs to the TekneHub lab, which is one of the four laboratories of the Techno-pole of UNIFE, within the European Building Platform and part of the High Technology Network of the Emilia Romagna region (HTN-RE). Actually, the main research activity is focused on dual-source heat pumps for space cooling and heating. Especially, LAG is testing a novel prototype of horizontal ground heat exchanger, which is an European patent pending (n. EP11177528.4) of UNIFE, as coupled with a standard air-source heat pumps by means of an innovative control unit.

His main international relationships involve colleagues at the University of Nottingham, Technical University of Sofia, Istanbul Technical University, University of Malta, Akita University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Science and Technology of China.

He was member of the Research Council of the University of Ferrara in 2012-2014 and 2014-2016, Academic Senate (2018-19) and of several commissions at the Department of Architecture.

Before his academic carrier, he was designer of wastewater treatment plants, landfills, hydraulic networks, river flood control systems, air-conditioning plants and environmental mitigations for public and private clients (e.g. Solvay, Degremont, Ansaldo, Edison, Pirelli RE, and several Italian authorities).