Professor Michele Parrinello is one of the pioneers of computational science worldwide. He graduated in Physics from the University of Bologna and carried out research at prestigious institutions such as SISSA in Trieste, the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, and the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. Since 2001, he has been Professor of Computational Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano. He is a member of leading scientific academies, including the Royal Society of London, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Accademia dei Lincei.

His career is marked by contributions that have revolutionized molecular simulations. Among the most notable are the Parrinello–Rahman method (1981), the Car–Parrinello method (1985), and metadynamics—techniques that have greatly expanded the possibilities of studying matter and are now foundational in fields such as computational chemistry, materials science, and molecular modeling. More recently, he has contributed to the integration of machine learning into atomistic simulations, opening new perspectives in research on energy, catalysis, and environmental sustainability.

His achievements have been recognized with numerous international awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, the Marcel Benoist Prize, and the Dirac Medal. With over 150,000 citations and an h-index of 163, Michele Parrinello is among the most cited and influential scientists in the world.