Michele is the principal architect and maintainer of the OpenQuake Engine, which is developed at the Global Earthquake Model Foundation in Pavia, Italy. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics, specializing in Quantum Field Theory, which he obtained in Parma. He has been involved with Python and the Open Source community since 2002 and has spent 7 years working in the financial industry, focusing primarily on database and web programming. At GEM, he collaborates closely with the scientific team to implement and test new features in the OpenQuake Engine and optimize existing calculators. He has a keen interest in High Performance Computing.