He studied at the University of Lecce, Italy, where he has obtained his doctoral degree in Mathematics. Before joining FUB, he was also working at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, where he has obtained the habilitation in Mathematics in 2010. His research activities focus on the fields of dependence and copula models, with particular emphasis on applications in financial risk management, reliability theory, and environmental science (especially hydrology). He co-edited two books devoted to copula theory and its applications published by Springer. Moreover, he has organized several international events and special sessions about dependence models in the recent years. Currently, he is associate editor of the journal "Computational Statistics and Data Analysis" and "Dependence Modeling".