He is emeritus professor at Polythecnic School of Milan. His research activity is related to the fields of ultrashort laser pulses and solid-state lasers. He is considered one of the international pioneers in the fields of lasers and photonics. He is the inventor of supergaussian mirrors for diffraction limited lasers, of the diode-pumped Er:Yb:glass for optical communications, and of the hollow-fiber compressor for extreme nonlinear optics and attosecond science. He is the author of the book "Principles of Lasers" (Springer, New York, 5th edition, 2010) which has been translated in several languages (Russian, Chinese, Greek, Arabic and Farsi languages) and is currently used at several universities. He is fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) and of the Optical Society of America. He is an elected member of the "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei", of the "Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL" and of the "Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere". He has been awarded by the Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physical Society (1998), the Italgas Prize (2000), the gold medal of the Italian President of Republic for deserving citizen in the Science, Culture and Art (2005), the Charles Hard Townes award of the Optical Society of America (2005), and the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics (2011). In the year 2000 he has performed expert work for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.