Fundación Galileo Galilei - INAF Telescopio Nazionale Galileo 28°45'14.4N 17°53'20.6W 2387.2m A.S.L.

Change in the direction of Fundación Galileo Galilei - INAF

Starting from November 1st 2008, Dr. Emilio Molinari is the new director of the Fundación Galileo Galilei - INAF (FGG). He takes the responsibility of both the administrative direction of the FGG (formerly taken by Guido Ceppatelli) and of the scientific direction of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (formerly under the responsibility of Ernesto Oliva).

Emilio obtained his PhD degree in Milan with a dissertation entitled "The Evolution of Galaxies: Observing Distant Clusters". Starting from 1997, his main research interests moved to the development of instrumentation for ground-based telescopes.

In particular, in 1998 he was one of the founders of the gOlem working group at the Merate Observatory. Within this group, Emilio collaborated in the integration and upgrades of the spectrograph DOLoRes at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG). Moreover, he took part in the optical design of VIMOS (ESO-VLT).

Also, in the framework of basic research in materials for astronomy, Emilio was responsible at the Italian national level of EGUNA, an international project to promote the industrial fabrication of Volume Phase Holographyc gratings. Moreover, he leaded DROP, an Italian funded project for the exploitation of such new gratings which led to the refurbishment of gratings for Asiago and TNG telescopes.

Subsequently, he continued this project as research line responsible in the OPTICON project for the non conventional uses of optical devices. More recently, Emilio entered in the consortium for the prototype of a plane, adaptive mirror for the ESO E-ELT.

From 2000 to date, as responsible of the REM project, he is leading in the ESO site of La Silla the operations of a robotic telescope for the monitoring of GRB transients.


The new TNG director, Emilio Molinari
The new TNG director, Emilio Molinari