Born in 1962, Giampaolo Piotto had the Laureato degree in Astronomy in 1986 at the University of Padova, where he also got the PhD in Astronomy in 1990. He is Full Professor at the University of Padova, where he is teaching "Astronomy" for the first level degree in Astronomy and "Laboratory of Astrophysics" for the second level degree in Astronomy. Giampaolo Piotto is Director of the PhD School in Astronomy of the University of Padova since 2002.

He has been Associate Researcher at the Astronomy Department of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987-88 and 1994-95. In 1990, he has been Associate Astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Garching.

His main scientific interests concern the stellar populations in open and globular clusters, and the search for and characterization of exoplanets. These activities have produced more than 280 research papers in international refereed journals and numerous invited reviews, with more than 17,000 citations, and an H factor of 73. Giampaolo Piotto has been PI of numerous observational projects with the major international observing facilities (including Hubble Space Telescope and ESO/VLT). He has been PI of an HST Large Treasury project, coordinating an international research group with 25 collaborators (project still ongoing).

He has been member of various scientific committees for the development of astronomical instrumentations.

He has been national PI of two PRIN (Research Projects of National Interest), namely PRIN-1999 (Stellar Dynamics and Stellar Evolution in Globular Clusters: a Challenge for the New Astronomical Instruments) and PRIN-2007 (Multiple Stellar Populations in Globular Clusters: Census, Characterization, and Origin).
He has been national responsible for Italian Space Agency (ASI) of the project “Italian participation to the feasibility study of the ESA-PLATO mission”. Piotto has been responsible for the University of Padova of the European ERC-FP7 project ETAEARTH (2012-17) for the determination of the fraction of Earth size planets among exoplanets. He is local responsible of the ASI project (2015-18) “Italian participation to the PLATO project” and of the ASI project (2015-18) “Italian participation to the CHEOPS project”.
Piotto is member of the PLATO Science Working Team of the European Space Agency (ESA). PLATO is a satellite for the search of exoplanets adopted within the Cosmic Vision program, for a launch in 2026. He is member of the Board of the PLATO Consortium. Piotto is responsible of the PLATO input catalog, the catalog of PLATO targets for the planet search.
Piotto is also member of the Board of the CHEOPS Consortium and of the CHEOPS Science Team. CHEOPS is an ESA satellite for characterization of exoplanets adopted for a launch in 2019.

Since 2011 Giampaolo Piotto is member of the Gurantee Time Observations (GTO) Science Team of HARPS-N, an instrument for the spectroscopic search and characterization of exoplanets, mounted on the Italian National Telescope (TNG) at Canary Islands, and member of the Board and of the Science Team of the Italian collaboration “Global Architecture of exoplanetary Systems (GAPS)”.

In 2012-14 Giampaolo Piotto has been ESA representative in the Hubble Space Telescope User Committee.

Giampaolo Piotto acted as referee for many peer review journals. He has been member of numerous committees for the assignment of telescope time, and referee for many international research funding agencies.

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