Born in 1976, I got my M.Sc. in Computer Science & Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in 2001 (100/100 cum laude) and my Ph.D. in Information Engineering (outstanding work, mark A) in October 2005, with a thesis on modeling of service- and workflow- based web applications (advisor prof. Piero Fraternali).I have been visiting researcher at Cisco Systems (San Josè, CA, USA) in 2001. The purpose of my stay was to validate the WebML methodology and language in a large scale industrial. I've been visiting researcher at UCSD (University of California, San Diego, CA, USA) in 2004, where I worked with prof. Vianu, Deutsch, Papakonstantinou. There, I had the opportunity of exploring the world of venture capitals and research exploitation in the US. I've worked on 5 European research projects, as well as with several companies for research exploitation and technology transfer (Acer, UniCredit, local govt. agencies, and many SMEs). I'm shareholder of the spin-off WebRatio and I'm interacting with several US companies for consultancy, standardization, and R&D activities.I have worked on various mainstream research topics (WebML, Search Computing, and others) and I also had the opportunity of opening new research lines of my own.Within these research lines, I have dealt with several major companies, including Cisco, Microsoft-FAST, Yahoo! Research, Google Research, XEROX, HP Labs for joint research activities.I think that all those opportunities shaped my attitude towards the relation between research and applications. I'm involved in intensive publication, dissemination and research exploitation activities, as demonstrated by: more than 200 research papers (13 on journals, 2 books); a public blog (www.modeldrivenstar.org) for general public on MDE, and active presence in online research and technology communities; and involvement with WebRatio, OMG, and industrial innovation projects.