University Tor Vergata, Biology degree at the University of Naples. He has been researcher at Stazione Zoologica “A. Dohrn” of Naples at the Biological Oceanography Laboratory, for about ten years. He has been assistant professor at the Universities of Sassari (Sardinia, Italy) and Palermo (Sicily, Italy). Since November 1998 he is Associate Professor of Ecology, at first at the University of Bari (Italy) and then, since November 2001, at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. He held several short courses and lectures on Numerical Ecology and Machine Learning application to Ecology in Universities and private Institutions both in Italy and abroad. He is a founder member of the International Society for Ecological Informatics and organized the 3rd Conference of the Society. He is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, book chapters and oral presentations. He is a member of the editorial board of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), Freshwater Biology (Wiley) and Ecological Informatics (Elsevier) and has been guest editor for Ecological Modelling. From 2007 to 2010 he has been a member of the Italian National Scientific Committee for Antarctica. His present research activities in the framework of national and international programmes include applications of neural networks and other machine learning techniques as empirical models of ecological processes, regional and global phytoplankton primary production models, assessment of ecosystem status and development and application of data analysis techniques in ecology, zoology and oceanography. He provides technical as well as scientific assistance to Italian Ministries and to other Institutions (e.g. he has been appointed as expert for the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive by the Ministry of the Environment).