Born in Rome on 23 April 1964, he graduated with honors in 1990 in Economics and Business from the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. After serving as Officer in the Navy, he obtained a CNR Fellowship to pursue further study at Cornell University (USA), where he completed a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Economics, respectively, in 1994 and 1995. In 2018 he was granted a Master in Economic Security, Geopolitics and Intelligence from SIOI (Rome).
After working as consultant at the World Bank in Washington (DC), in 1995 he joined the Economic Research Department of Banca d'Italia, focusing on macroeconomic analysis and forecasting. In 1999 he moved on to deal with monetary policy, becoming in 2003 Head of the Euro Policy Documentation and Liaison Office and then, in 2007, Deputy Head of the Monetary Analysis Division. In these positions, from 2003 to 2011, he managed, on alternate months, the monthly monetary policy briefing for the Governor.
In 2011, he proposed to bring the quantitative approach to the prevention of money laundering, becoming Head of the Financial Flow Analysis Division in the Bank's Anti-Money Laundering Unit (Unità di Informazione Finanziaria). In 2014 he created, in collaboration with prof. Masciandaro, the annual UIF-Bocconi Workshop on 'Quantitative methods and the fight against economic crime', aimed at encouraging dialogue between academia, financial and investigative authorities and banks; in recent years he has dealt with the infiltration of the economy by organized crime, developing risk mapping and indicators. Since 27 February 2023 he has been Head of the newly established Information Exploitation and Technological Innovation Directorate.
He was Visiting Scholar at the University of California at San Diego (UCDC) in 2010 and taught Monetary Economics and Macroeconomics, respectively, at the University of Molise (1999-2001) and Tor Vergata (2008-2010). He collaborates with academics from various universities (Bocconi, Chicago, EIEF, London School of Economics, Padua, Sapienza); he is the author of numerous publications in the fields of macroeconomics, credit supply and anti-money laundering in international scientific journals, including the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking (https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=GnK5gugAAAAJ&hl=it&oi=ao).
