Personal information
Biography
Fabio Pasian is currently associated to INAF at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, where he has worked from 1978 to 2018, since 2001 as Full Astronomer. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s “Astronomy and Computing” journal, and member of the Program Organizing Committee of the ADASS international conferences. He collaborates within the Euclid mission with the Project Office of the Scientific Ground Segment (that he has managed between 2009 and 2014). He is author/coauthor of over 520 publications and technical reports, with over 52000 citations.
During his career, his research activity was focused on the development of computer applications for astrophysics, e.g. data acquisition/processing/ archival/retrieval, distributed computing (“grid” and "cloud"), and the astronomical Virtual Observatory. He was involved in national and international projects, in particular: design of astronomical databases and archives (IUE/ULDA, Hubble, TNG, LBC, IA2), data processing for space missions (Spectrum-UV, Planck, Euclid), networks (GARR, Lightnet), grid (Grid.it, DRACO, EGEE), cloud (DHTCS-IT), the Virtual Observatory (VO-TECH, EuroVO-DCA, EuroVO-AIDA, EuroVO-ICE, CoSADIE) and common e-infrastructures for large projects (DHTCS-IT, ASTERICS, EOSCpilot, ESCAPE). For some of these projects he has held specific responsibilities: head of the European Hubble archive at ST-ECF/ESO (1989-92), PI of the archives at the TNG (1994-98), Co-I of the LBC instrument (1998-2006), Data Processing Centre Manager for Planck-LFI (1998-2005), PI of DRACO (2003-05), Chair of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (2008-10), Science Ground Segment Manager of the Consortium for the ESA Euclid mission (2008-14), INAF coordinator of the DHTCS-IT project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (2013-16), Chair of the ASTERICS General Assembly (2015-19). He was the INAF coordinator of 8 projects funded within the European Union FP6, FP7 and Horizon2020 Programmes. He was elected as a member of the Organising Committee of Commission no. 5 of the International Astronomical Union (2009-15), and was member of the European FITS Committee, from its creation to its closing (1986-2014).
He has done consultant activity for ASI, ESA and ESO in the fields of information systems and data processing and archiving, and was member of the Scientific Council of CDS, Strasbourg (chair in 1994 and 1997). Between May 2007 and October 2008 he was Deputy Chair of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA); from November 2008 to May 2010, he was the Chair of IVOA. Between June 2004 and December 2011 he was the Director of the INAF Information Systems Unit. He participated in and chaired many evaluation panels for INAF, ASI, NWO, NASA, ESA and ESO, and was referee for several scientific journals.