!!Eugenio Coccia - Biography
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Eugenio Coccia is an experimental physicist, internationally recognised since more then 40 years as one of the leaders of the Gravitational Wave research, with seminal contributions to the development of detectors. He is one of the authors of the first observation of GW and Black Hole merging, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017 to R.Weiss, B.Barish and K.Thorne.
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At present, he is Full Professor of Physics at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (L’Aquila, Italy) and, since November 2022, is the Director of the Institute for High Energy Physics (Barcelona, Spain). 
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He graduated in Physics cum laude in Rome University in 1980 in the group of Edoardo Amaldi. He was post-Doc and Fellow at CERN (1981-1985), research scientist (1985-1987) and professor of Physics (1988-2016) at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He spent various periods of research activity at CERN, at the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory in Leiden and at the INFN Laboratories of Frascati and Gran Sasso. 
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He directed the gravitational wave experiments EXPLORER at CERN and NAUTILUS at the INFN Frascati Laboratories. Member of the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration, he is today also the Chair of the Collaboration Board of the Einstein Telescope, the european project for a new generation detector, included in the ESFRI Roadmap.
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He has directed a major research infrastructure, the Gran Sasso Laboratories of the
National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), and after the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila,
he dedicated himself to the foundation of the ‘Gran Sasso Science Institute’, a PhD
School and Center of Advanced Studies, today at the top of research quality in Italy, of
which he was the first Rector.
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He has been Chair of the INFN Scientific Committee on Astroparticle Physics (2002-2003) and President of the Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics (2000-2004). 
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He has been member of international committees as ECFA (European Committee on Future Accelerators) and PANAGIC (Particle and Nuclear Astrophysics and Gravitation International Committee), and has been invited to be a member of international panels on the strategies of particle and astroparticle physics by CERN, the OECD Global Science Forum, the US National Academy of Sciences and the European Physical Society.  In 2023 he was appointed, by the Italian Prime Minister's, as President of the Commission for the Forecasting and Prevention of Major Risks.
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He has given lectures and seminars in Universities and research centers all over the world and is the author of more than 400 scientific articles in international journals.