Prof. Pietro Ferraro
Institute of Applied Sciences & Intelligent Systems Campi Flegrei, Italy
(SPIE Fellow, H-index: 64)
Dr. Pietro Ferraro received the doctor of Physics degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Napoli “Federico II”, Italy, in 1987. Soon after he joined Aeritalia-Alenia Aeronautics (the major Aerospace company in Italy) as researcher to develop applied research in Optical Non-Destructive Testing of carbon fiber materials. He has been Principal Investigator (PI) (1991-1993) on behalf of Composite Materials Research Center of Alenia for two R&D Projects in the frame of a Cooperative Research And Development Agreement (CRADA) between Finmeccanica (Roma) and United Technologies Research Center, Electronics & Photonics Group (Directed by Dr. A.J. De Maria), East Hartford, CT (USA). The two research projects were on “Non destructive testing of large composite aircraft structures by Holography methods” (PI for UTRC Dr. Karl A. Stetson) and “Fiber Optic Bragg Grating Sensors” (PI for UTRC Dr. J. R. Dunphy). During this cooperation he contributed to pioneering work on Fiber Bragg Grating for strain sensing, development of related instrumentations and optical fiber emebedding process in composite materials for which 3 patents were awarded jointly to Finmeccanica and UTRC. In 1993 he joined Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Optics Group at Institute of Cybernetics, Pozzuoli (Napoli), Italy as Associate Researcher to develop interferometric and holographic methods for testing and characterization of optical components and materials. In 2001 he joined as Researcher the CNR–Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems, Napoli. In 2003 he joined National Institute for Applied Optics (INOA) as Senior Research Scientist. Since 2005 he is Head of the Research Line and Group on behalf of CNR in Optical diagnostics, Interferometric and Microscopy.