User:Sgr4ngg/Filippo Frontera

Filippo Frontera (Savelli, 16 November 1941) is an Italian astrophysicist and professor, who deals with astronomical investigations on celestial gamma-rays.

Biography and Contributions
Full professor of Experimental Physics of the University of Ferrara, Engineering Faculty, Ferrara, Italy, retired in  2012, for eight years Filippo Frontera was coordinator of the PhD course in Physics of this University. Previously, from 1969 to 1985, was a scientist of the IASF -CNR institute (now OAS-INAF) in Bologna. Now, as “Distinguished Scientist” of the Università di Ferrara, Dipartimento di Fisica e Scienze della Terra, is continuing his research activity and is lecturer of  “Measurements and Observations of celestial X-/gamma-rays” for the Master course in Physics. He is also associated scientist of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) at the Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science (OAS) in Bologna. He is also adjunct professor of the International Center of Relativistic Astrophysics Network (ICRANET) and is a Faculty member of the international  IRAP-PhD doctorate.

Since his “Laurea” degree in Physics with laude in 1966 at the Università di Bologna, he carried out his scientific activity in the field of the hard X-ray astronomy. He was Principal Investigator (PI) of many successful satellite and balloon experiments, with the latter launched from Italy, France, USA and Australia. Among the most relevant results obtained with balloon experiments, it merits to be mentioned the first evidence of Quasi Periodic Oscillations from a black hole candidate, discovery that was confirmed about 10 years later with the CGRO NASA satellite mission. Among the satellite experiments, it merits to mention those on board the BeppoSAX satellite, that was launched on April 30, 1996 from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA). Indeed, Frontera was PI of the high energy telescope (15-300 keV), “Phoswich Detection System” (PDS) based on a detection technique named Phoswich (= Phosphor Sandwich), and of the experiment “Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor” (GRBM) located inside PDS, with many relevant results from both of them. Concerning the GRBM experiment, it had a fundamental role, along with the Wide Field Cameras, for the discovery, occurred in 1997, of the extragalactic origin of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), a mystery about 30 years old unveiled thanks to BeppoSAX. This discovery was classified by the American journal Science among the top ten most important discoveries of the 1997 year in all science fields. During the life time of BeppoSAX (30 April 1996 - 30 April 2002), GRBM detected more than thousand GRBs, and allowed many other discoveries, among them, the so called “Amati relation” from the name of the first author , of great importance for GRB physics and cosmology.

Frontera was also Co-PI for the development and production of the JEM-X experiment on board the INTEGRAL satellite, still operational, with the realization of the field collimator and the ground calibration of the experiment at the X-ray facility LARIX designed and developed under the Frontera responsibility in the Department of Physics and Earth Science of the Università di Ferrara. LARIX, now extended and upgraded, is a trans-national facility of the European program AHEAD.

Frontera has also collaborated to the design and calibration of the high energy X-ray experiment (HE) aboard the Chinese satellite Insight-HXMT developed at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) (PI Shuang-Nan Zhang) successfully launched on 15 June 2017 from the Chinese launch base of Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert. The collaboration with IHEP is continuing with the scientific exploitation of this satellite.

In collaboration, mainly, with IASF-INAF (now OAS-INAF) of Bologna, Frontera led the development of the first Laue lens prototype to focus high energy X-rays. Such lens concept can also be adopted for medical physics (e.g., radiotherapy). The mounting technique of such lens is the subject of an ASI-University of Ferrara patent. The development of Laue lenses for astrophysical applications is continuing and a new concept of Laue lens has been proposed for a mission idea, ASTENA, proposed for the ESA long term program “Voyage 2050”.

He is author of about 350 papers published in international refereed journals, among which Nature and Science and about 200 publications in Proceedings of international symposia, with more than 800 titles in the NASA ADS (Astrophysics Data System) archive, inclusive of Circulars, Telegrams and talks to international symposia. Also co-editor of Proceedings devoted to GRBs.

For the high citation rate (currently more than 20 thousand), in 2007 he was included among the "Highly cited researchers" by ISI-Thomson from Philadelphia (USA).

Frontera is an emeritus member of the American Astronomical Society, member of the Italian Physical Society (SIF), of the Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV) and of the Ferrara Academy of Sciences.

He is also member of the Italian Association “Group 2003 for the Scientific Research” made of Italian scientists recognized to be highly cited researchers.

Awards
In 1998 Frontera, along with the research team of the Beppo-SAX satellite, received the Bruno Rossi prize “for the prompt discovery and accurate localization of the X-ray counterpart of Gamma Ray Bursts, thus making possible their extragalactic origin”.

For the same discovery, in 2002 Frontera, along with the research group represented  by the astrophysicist Ed van den Heuvel, was awarded of the Descartes prize.

In 2010, Frontera along with Enrico Costa, one of his two deputy PIs for the BeppoSAX/PDS and GRBM experiments, was awarded of the SIF Enrico Fermi prize.

In 2012 Frontera received the Marcel Grossmann Award for having led the design and development of the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor aboard Beppo-SAX.