Background
Parrinello was born on September 7, 1945 in Messina, Italy; the son of Giacomo and Benedetta (Morando) Parrinello.
2011
Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter presents the 2011 Marcel Benoist Prize to Michele Parrinello.
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Parrinello received a degree in physics from the University of Bologna in 1968.
Parrinello was born on September 7, 1945 in Messina, Italy; the son of Giacomo and Benedetta (Morando) Parrinello.
Parrinello received a degree in physics from the University of Bologna in 1968.
Parrinello began his career as a researcher at the National Research Council in 1969. Three years later he took the position of a lecturer at the University of Messina, where he worked until 1977. Also Michele worked as a lecturer at the University of Trieste from 1976 to 1986.
In 1986, he became a professor at International School for Advanced Studies and had held the position for five years. In 1989, Parrinello was appointed a research staff member at IBM Research – Zurich. Then in 1994, he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Since 2001 Michele has been a professor of computational science at ETH Zurich, a position he also holds at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. Also he worked as a director of the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing from 2001 to 2003.
Parrinello is an external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
On December 23, 1971 Parrinello married Roseva Vitarelli, with whom he divorced in 1986. On March 4, 1995 he married Jennifer M. Stone. They have a child.