Prof. Roberto Battiston

ASI President

Roberto Battiston was born in Trento in 1956. He's married to Maria and is a father of four. He received his Laurea degree at Scuola Normale of Pisa in 1979; and his Doctorate University of Paris IX, Orsay in 1982. From 1992-2012 he served as the Chair of General Physics at the Engineering Faculty of the Perugia University, Faculty of Engineering. He then became the Chair of General Physics at the Physics Department or the Trento University, and currently holds that position. In 2017 he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur and the Vladimir Syromyatnikov Award.
He has worked for over 30 years in international collaborations in the field of experimental physics and fundamental interactions: Strong interactions, Electroweak interaction physics, search for antimatter and dark matter in Cosmic Rays.
He is the founder of a research group in Perugia active in the field of frontier detectors and technologies to be used in fundamental physics research ground based and space based. In 1994 he founded SERMS (Laboratory for the Study of the Effects of the Radiation on Special Materials), devoted to the characterization of materials and devices to be used in space conditions.
Professor Battiston is the Deputy spokesperson for the AMS experiment, the first fundamental physics experiment approved on the International Space Station, already successfully flown during the STS91 Shuttle flight in June 1998 (2007- ) and installed on the ISS in 2011.
Moreover, he was the Italian Coordinator for a Network of University Laboratories to develop scientific payloads for space applications from 2001-2002 and 2003-2004 and 2006-2007. He was the Italian PI for the LIMADOU, to develop and energetic particle payload for the Chinese CSES satellite from 2011-2014, which was supposed to be launched in 2017. He was the coordinator of the SR2S EU project in 2013 to 2015 to develop active shielding techniques for interplanetary flights
Member of CEPR. In addition to the governmental committee advising the Minister of Research and University from 2014-2015. He was the Vice President of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAF) from 2014 to 2017.
He currently holds the position of President of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) since 2014. He is the author of more than 420 papers published on international scientific journals and organizer of several workshops devoted to space science and to advanced technologies.