Paolo Piattelli graduated in Physics from the University of Catania in 1985 and has been a research fellow at the Southern National Laboratories of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) since 1988. He devoted the early years of his career to experimental nuclear physics, taking part in research programmes conducted in Italy and at various European laboratories. From the late 1990s onwards, his scientific interest has centred on astroparticle physics and, in particular, on the search for cosmic neutrinos – extremely elusive particles that reach Earth from the most energetic and remote regions of the Universe. He has been one of the leading figures in the development of the underwater scientific infrastructure built in the Mediterranean for the observation of high-energy neutrinos. He has participated in the NEMO and ANTARES projects and played a leading role in the design and construction of KM3NeT, the large European underwater telescope installed in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The observatory employs thousands of optical sensors distributed across the seabed to detect the faint light produced by the interaction of neutrinos with water.

Throughout his career, he has held numerous scientific and managerial coordination roles within the INFN and in international collaborations dedicated to the development of neutrino telescopes. His research now focuses on neutrino astronomy and the analysis of the most extreme astrophysical phenomena, contributing to the establishment of the multi-messenger approach in the study of the Universe.
He is currently a Research Director at INFN and the Operations Manager of the ARCA telescope, part of KM3NeT, installed in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sicily.
Since 2009, he has been involved in the study of KM3NeT, a type of neutrino telescope used for research in the fields of marine science and geology.
The facility is currently under construction in the Mediterranean and is divided into two sites: the first in Italy, 80 km southeast of Capo Passero at a depth of 3,500 m, and the second in France, 40 km south of Toulon at a depth of 2,500 m.

KM3NeT-It