Born in 1984, he is an Italian speleologist and geologist and currently serves as president of the La Venta Association for Geographical Explorations. With over thirty expeditions to his name, he has explored caves and canyons across South America and Central Asia, leading multidisciplinary research teams to some of the planet’s most remote regions. His discovery of ancient caves in Venezuela’s tabletop mountains earned him the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, and he continues to investigate karst systems in Italy.
A co-founder of Miles Beyond in 2017, he remained part of its core team until 2024, when he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Padua. There, he teaches Earth Observation and Field Mapping in the international degree program Earth, Climate, and Dynamics. His academic contributions include over fifty scientific papers published in leading journals. For more than a decade, he has collaborated with the European Space Agency (ESA) as a consultant, training astronauts for planetary exploration through the PANGAEA and CAVES programs. Recognized for his pioneering work, TIME magazine listed him among the 20 most influential emerging leaders in 2016.
His expertise has also made him a sought-after figure in media and exploration circles. He was a featured speaker at the 2019 National Geographic Explorer Festival in Washington and contributed to the National Geographic series Welcome to Earth. His discoveries in Venezuela and beyond have been documented by major networks and publications, including BBC (The Dark, 2012; Mountain Challenge 2, 2016; The Genius Behind, 2016), ARTE, ZDF, National Geographic Magazine (Italy and France), GEO, and Scientific American.
In Italy, he has appeared on prominent television programs such as TG1 (Rai 1), Che tempo che fa (Rai 2), GEO (Rai 3), Kilimanjaro (Rai 3), and Voyager (Rai 2). His contributions to exploration were further highlighted in Rolex’s Perpetual Planet campaign, where he was featured alongside legendary figures like Sir Edmund Hillary, James Cameron, and Sylvia Earle.
