He has been rector of the University of Bologna (2015-2021) and is full professor of Mechanics of Solids and Structures. Since 2007, he has carried out research in the field of computational mechanics. Numerical modeling, structural analysis, intelligent structures, historic and archaeological structures, structural monitoring and diagnostics are just a few of the main topics he wrote about, with more than 80 publications in International magazines.
He is also President of CINECA (cineca.it) and Vicepresident of the Italian Research Center on High-Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing – ICSC (supercomputing-icsc.it). He is member of the Advisory Committee of ANVUR (Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems) and member of the Board of EUA (European University Association).