From 1975 to 1983 he was researcher of the Italian National Research Council. He is presently Full Professor of Computer Programming. He has been for the period 1985-1990 President of the Italian Group of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) and for the period 1989-1995 the Director of the Department of Computer and Systems Engineering of Pavia University. He has been Visiting Professor for the Spring Semester of 1987 at Rutgers University, at the Center of Computer Aids for Industrial Productivity (CAIP), New Jersey. Since the academic year 1994/95, he has been Invited Professor for one month per year at the Paris XI University. In July 1995 he has been nominated member of the Conseil d’Orientation Scientifique International of the Pole Universitaire Europeen de Tolouse.
His most recent work is concerned with object recognition and parallel architectures for image processing and computer vision. He has been in the 80’s the coordinator of an Italian National Project involving researchers of a consortium of seven Universities for the design and construction of a pyramidal system for image analysis. Since 1993, he is the coordinator of an Italian National Project on Multimedia Systems involving several universities.
He is author or co-author of more than 130 Journal or Conference papers and book chapters and the editor or co-editor of 13 books and co-author of a book on ‘Pyramidal Architectures for Computer Vision’. He organized a number of International Conferences and a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (as co-Director) on subjects related to image processing and computer vision.
He is Fellow of the IAPR (International Association for Pattern Recognition) since 1994 and Fellow of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) since 1997.