He received an M.D. degree and Pediatric Residency from the Catholic University of Rome. He was a research fellow at the University of California at San Francisco and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, until 1998, when he joined the Faculty of Neurology and Developmental and Molecular Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. He assumed his current position in 2002. His research has focused on delineating the role of Id2 and the retinoblastoma tumour-suppressor protein in development and pediatric cancer of the nervous system. Hi lab is collaborating with the group of Andrea Califano at Columbia University on the identification of master regulatory factors in neral development and brain tumors.