Assistant Professor of Planetary Geology and Volcanology

• Sep 2018 - Present

Italian geophysicist and volcanologist. My main activity is the study of planetary geology and volcanology of the Solar System. I got the attention of many international newspapers in 2014 after that I proposed that Valles Marineris on Mars was formed by lava and not by water. In the same year I got the results of 3D computer simulations showing once more how the Martian dichotomy was formed by the southern polar giant impact (SPGI) as an alternative hypothesis to the northern polar giant impact [17] , 2D models of the SPGI were already developed by other authors since 2006. In 2016 I validated this hypothesis with the discovery of 12 volcanic alignments in the southern hemisphere of Mars as the 3D SPGI model predicted. My observations of the outflow channels and the fluvial networks spreading from the volcanoes, coupled to the presence of unaltered olivine since the Noachian age, are challenging the past views of a warm and wet Mars. Show less

Director - Instituto de Astronomia y Ciencias Planetarias

• Apr 2019 - May 2021

PHD Student

• Jun 2011 - Feb 2016

Member of Prof. Paul Tackley’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics group and member of the Geophysics Institute Teaching Committee at ETH Zurich. Worked at the origin of the Martian dichotomy through numerical modeling validated with a geologic and volcanologic study of the surface of Mars to investigate an alternative process of formation that involved a giant impact on the South Pole with a lunar sized impactor of 1600 km of radius with a 80% iron (by radius) fraction, or 2000 km radius with a 50% iron fraction, hitting at a speed of 5 km/s (the escape velocity of Mars), melting much of the interior and 1/2 of the planetary surface with the creation of a magma ocean that formed the highlands upon cooling and solidification. Using a combination of I3ELVIS (immediate post-impact and core formation) and STAGYY (long-term) C and Fortran thermo-mechanical codes, respectively. Show less

PhD Student

• Oct 1996 - Aug 2007

Worked with Prof. Lionel Wilson, in collaboration with NASA JPL, under the NASA Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program, for the study of eruption processes on Io from Galileo NIMS, SSI and Photo-Polarimeter-Radiometer (PPR) data and estimates of material volume during the October 1999 episode at Prometheus which resulted in: 1) production of a detailed geological map of the Prometheus Patera Area with subsequent 2) determination of conduit geometry and magma chamber depth and size, 3) determination of the global average geothermal gradient through numerical modelling of the lithosphere using a finite-difference analysis. Show less

Assegno di Ricerca

• Sep 2001 - Sep 2002

Analysed Martian putative paleolakes and estimated salts sedimentation preliminary to the Mars Exploration Rover A mission “Spirit”. Analysed Martian putative paleolakes and estimated salts sedimentation preliminary to the Mars Exploration Rover A mission “Spirit”.