He graduated in Chemical Engineering at Rome University "La Sapienza" and received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the same university.
From 1991 to 1999 he held the position of Assistant Professor in the scientific area "System Analysis for Chemical Engineering" at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials & Environment (DICMA) at "La Sapienza" University. Since 2000 he is Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering in the scientific area ING-IND/24 – Chemical Engineering Principles at "La Sapienza" University.
His current teaching includes "Biochemical Engineering Principles" (MD in Chemical Engineering) and "Chemical Engineering for Biomedical Systems" (MD in Biomedical Engineering). In the past he gave courses of "Chemical Kinetics", "Chemical Engineering Principles", "Chemical Reactors" and "Environmental Biochemical Engineering" at the Faculty of Engineering and "Biotechnological Chemical Engineering" at the Faculty of Medicine.
He has been supervisor of over 90 dissertation or thesis projects for the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering.
He has been scientific responsible of several research projects financed by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) and by private institutions.
As scientific responsible, he has coordinated the research activities in collaboration agreements between DICMA and the Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-Food and Forest Systems (DIBAF, University of Tuscia) and between DICMA and the Department of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering (DIMCM, University of Cagliari).
His research activity has been developed in many fields, including homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, chemical thermodynamics, enzyme kinetics, protein stability and transport phenomena in membrane systems. At present, his main research interests are focused on the degradation of recalcitrant organic compounds by advanced oxidation processes, on the production of metal nanoparticles by environmentally sustainable technologies and on the recovery of value-added products from microalgae and agro-industrial wastes. Regarding the latter topic, both chemical and enzyme-assisted extraction procedures have been explored as a means to recover bioactive compounds from the biomass. Special attention is given to the optimization of process conditions using advanced statistical methods for the design of experiments and the development of mathematical models.
He has been invited referee of several international journals such as Chemical Engineering Science, AIChE Journal, Biochemical Engineering Journal, Separation and Purification Technology, Thermochimica Acta, European Food Research and Technology, International Journal of Food Science & Technology.
He is author of more than 130 scientific publications and six industrial patents.
Bibliometric indicators on Scopus (December 18, 2024):
Documents: 126, Citations: 4348, Citing articles: 3577, h-index: 40