INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astro Fisica) is the Institute that funds and organises astronomical research in Italy. INAF scientific staff amounts to about 700 researchers (permanent staff) and about 300 post- docs and other temporary positions. INAF organizes all astronomical activities at the national level over 15 different Institutes scattered across Italy and operates in synergy with the Italian Universities that host an Astronomy or Physics Department. INAF directly owns several world-class observing facilities (like the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) or the Sardinia radio Telescope (SRT)), and sizeable shares of other international facilities (like the Large Binocular Telescope, the future Cerenkov Telescope Array or Square Kilometer Array) and is the Italian representative inside ESO. In collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) it supports the development and scientific exploitation of several space missions (Agile, Fermi, Gaia, Herschel, Euclid, to mention a few).

I held several roles inside INAF. I am currently the head of the INAF Division for optical and near-IR astronomy, that supervises the all the projects in the optical domain (like ESO telescopes, LBT,TNG, but also satellites like Euclid, Gaia, Cheops and others).