Born in Modena in 1964, he earned his Laurea Degree in Electronic Engineering from University of Bologna in 1992 with a score of 100/100 cum laude. He got the PhD in Bioengineering from University of Bologna in 1996. From 1997 to 2000 he was appointed with a Postdoc position at the Mathematics Department of University of California, Berkeley and the Math Department of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, working in the group of James Sethian and Alexander Chorin. Since 2001 he has a permanent position at University of Bologna, where he teaches the classes of Bioimaging. In 2003 he was also appointed as Maitre de Recherche at CREA, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. He wrote more then 80 publications in the field of computer vision, medical imaging and biologically based models of visual perception. With Giovanna Citti, he is the scientific responsible of the Gruppo Interdipartimentale di Visione, an interdisciplinary group comprehending the Dipartmento di Elettronica,Informatica e Sistemistica and the Dipartimento di Matematica of the Bologna University. In the last 3 years he gave lectures at University of Yale, UC Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, Freie Universitat Berlin, Ecole Normale Superieure Cachan, Palazzone di Cortona Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.