He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in telecommunications engineering from the University of Federico II of Naples, Italy, and he earned M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Prior to joining MIRSL, he was a post-doctoral research associate at Brown University. Dr. Parente's research interests include hyperspectral imaging, sensors and data analysis, and machine learning techniques for determining ground composition and detecting geomorphological features. He is a member of the NASA Compact Reconnaisance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) research teams.