Pierluigi Zaccaria

Pierluigi Zaccaria was born in Padua, Italy, in 1955. He received the B.E. degree in civil structural engineering and the Ph.D. degree in engineering of structures from the University of Padova, Padua, in 1979 and 1984, respectively. Since 1985, has been an Employee with the National Research Council of Italy, Rome, Italy, as a Researcher and a Technologist with the Institute of Ionized Gas, Padua, working on engineering and physics studies and research on controlled thermonuclear fusion. From 1984 to 2005, he was part of the Team for design, construction, monitoring, and upgrades of RFX, the largest Reversed Field Pinch experiment in the world for nuclear fusion research. During the whole period, he covered different roles of responsibility, performing and supervising specific activities for mechanical parts of RFX machine as vacuum vessel, support structures, main windings for magnetic fields, and sensors/monitoring systems. From 2000 to 2004, he led the upgrade of the RFX-mod machine with regard to the newly optimized first wall, toroidal support structure, and thin copper shell for plasma stabilization. From 2009 to 2021, he was the Project Leader for the Thermomechanical Systems of megavolt ITER injector and concept advancement (MITICA) and source for the production of ions of deuterium extracted from a radio frequency plasma (SPIDER) experiments in the Neutral Beam Test Facility, an international enterprise aiming to develop and optimize a prototype for the megavolt ITER injector and concept advancement (ITER) Heating Neutral Beam Injector, at Consorzio RFX [Padua (I)].