Salvatore Sciortino

Background

About Salvatore Sciortino

Salvatore Sciortino is born in Palermo in 1955. Laurea cum laude in Physics at the University of Palermo in 1978. In 1979 he starts his research activity on Stellar Coronal Physics with the late Prof. G. S. Vaiana, at that time responsible at Center for Astrophysics (Ma USA) of the program of stellar observations with Einstein, the first imaging X-ray observatory, conceived and realized by the group leaded by R. Giacconi. He spend over more than a decade long research periods at CfA. Since 2001 he is Astronomo Ordinario (Chair equivalent position) at Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo (OAPA). He has been Co-I of the XMM-Newton EPIC (European Photon Imaging Camera,(http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es) and member of the OAPA team of the HRC (High Resolution Camera) of Chandra (http://cxc.harvard.edu). He has leaded, in collaboration with Dr. F.R. Harnden, Jr, the HRC GTO program of stellar observations. He has been and is PI of national level research programs, of tens of GO programs with ROSAT, ASCA, SAX, Chandra, XMM-Newton as well as of ground based observational programs. In 2002-2004 he co-leaded the preparatio of the Italian program for High Energy Astrophysics and has collaborated to the program for the years 2004-2006. From 2002 to 2011 he has been Director of Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo and during 2012 Director of INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania. From 2006 to 2011 he has been the INAF member in the board of directors of the Sicilian COMETA consortium for ICT research and innovation. He has been member of the XEUS and IXO Definition Team, and member of the ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics) Study Team. He has also served in several INAF committees to study various aspects of INAF organization and key problems. He is currently the Head of the Coordination Unit of the INAF Science Direction. He is author > 400 pubblications,> 160 in international professional journals. His H-index (Google Scholar in 2014) is 45.