Dr Domenico Laforenza is currently Director of the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). IIT is located in Pisa, Italy. Since the June 2008 he was responsible for the High Performance Computing Laboratory at the Information Science and Technologies Institute (ISTI) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), a research Institute constituted during the 2002 from the merging of CNUCE-CNR and IEI-CNR. ISTI is located in Pisa, Italy. He was born in Acquaviva delle Fonti (Bari) on September 26, 1952. Dr. Laforenza received the doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science of University of Pisa in 1977. Since 1997 Dr. Laforenza was responsible for the CNUCE-CNR’s Advanced Computing Department. He joined CNUCE in 1972 where he was performance evaluator (until 1981) and researcher since 1981. Since 1981 his main fields of research interest are: high performance computing and the programming of parallel systems. From 1989 to 1994 he was responsible of the CNR Support Initiative on Parallel Computing, aimed at introducing and exploiting in Italy parallel computing technologies in Academia and Industry. Currently he has a joint appointment at the Department of Computer Science of University of Pisa as professor of Parallel and Distributed Applications. Since 1995 he is interested in metacomputing and Grid computing. Dr. Laforenza has written numerous technical and scientific papers and he served as program committee member and organizer of many national and international workshops and conferences related to High Performance Computing. Since 1999, he is regularly involved in consultation with the European Union in reviewing proposals having as main focus Grid Computing technologies and their applications. Dr. Laforenza was appointed as coordinator of some National initiatives on Grid Computing funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR). In particular, he is involved in the Italian project GRID.IT, a 3-year research project started in 2002, where he serves as responsible for the ISTI-CNR Research Unit. During the years 2002-2003 he was member of the Grid Forum Steering Committee (GFSC) and co-Director of the Grid Performance and Information Services Area. He was also involved in the GGF GROC (Grid Research Oversight Committee), a committee created to oversee and provide guidance to the GGF Research groups hosting the workshops that will be held at every GGF meeting. Dr. Laforenza contributed to the creation of CoreGRID, the European Research Network on Foundations, Software Infrastructures and Applications for large scale distributed, GRID and Peer-to-Peer Technologies, funded by the European Commission 6th Framework Program. From September 2004, he is chairman of the CoreGrid Members General Assembly, and member of the Integration Monitoring Committee and the Executive Committee. In June 2006 he was appointed as chairman of the Governing Board of the IST FP6 XtreemOS project. Currently Dr. Laforenza is actively involved in several European Grid projects (e.g. CoreGrid, NextGrid, GridCoord, Grid@Asia, XtreemOS, GridComp). Dr. Laforenza was member of the Next Generation Grid (NGG1, NGG2, NGG3) Expert Group selected by the European Commission Directorate General Information Society Unit F2 European Commission. Since September 2006 he is member of the Scientific Advisory Board (Consiglio Scientifico) of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department of the Italian National Research Council (CNR).