Born in Massa Marittima, he studied physics at the University of Pisa. From the beginning, he showed great interest in how things work, the behavior of materials, and the invention and construction of machines and instruments. He has designed and/or built lasers and light detectors, instruments for the detection of elementary particles, such as trackers and calorimeters, components for gravitational wave detectors, such as metallic seismic isolations, silicon suspensions, and optimized dielectric mirrors, and radio frequency interferometric instruments for haptic virtual reality. He has mentored more than 200 young scientists and engineers, who under his guidance have produced more than 100 articles or theses and 20 patents. He is currently interested in nuclear energy production.