Giulio Magli - Brief CV
Giulio Magli is a Physicist (MA degree cum laude University of Milan 1989, Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics 1992), currently Full Professor at the Politecnico of Milan and Dean of the Department of Mathematics. Academic career: Research Associate (Como Faculty 1993-2000) / Associate Professor (Faculty of Civil, Environmental and Landscape Engineering 2000-2005) / Full (School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering, 2005-present). Starting from the academic year 2007-2008 he has been teaching the unique official course on Archaeoastronomy ever established in an Italian University, devoted to the II level M.A. degree students in Architecture.
He has been visiting scientist in several scientific institutions; among them the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences of Warsaw, Poland; the Theoretical Astrophysics Group of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research of Bombay, India, the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Bern University, Swiss, and the Department of Architectural Studies, Xian Jaotong University, China. Invited speaker at several national and international conferences trough the years, he has been Co-chair (together with Mauro Francaviglia) of the international conference series “Dynamics and Thermodynamics of Blackholes and Naked Singularities”.
Research activity first developed in Relativistic Astrophysics, with special attention to the interaction of the gravitational field with matter fields and the mathematical properties of the solutions of the Einstein field equations. Starting from 1999 scientific activity gradually moved to Archaeoastronomy, with special interest for the relationship between architecture, landscape and mathematical - astronomical lore of ancient cultures, especially among the Ancient Egyptians but also among the Incas and in the Mediterranean. In more recent years, he has been working extensively in Asia, first in Cambodia and later in China as visiting Professor at the Department of Architecture, Xian Jatong University.
On Archaeoastronomy he authored the books “Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy” (Springer-Verlag 2009), “Architecture, astronomy and sacred landscape in ancient Egypt” (Cambridge University Press 2013), “Archaeoastronomy - Introduction to the science of stars and stones” (Springer Verlag 2016).
He has been one of the authors of the UNESCO-IAU document on astronomical heritage and has been conducting archaeological survey missions on pre-nuragic Sardinia and in Central Italy, as well as spending several periods in Egypt investigating the ancient topography of the pyramid's fields and other ancient landscapes. He has been member of the scientific committee of the Center for Cultural Heritage of the Politecnico of Milan and co-responsible, together with the Director of the “Ente parco Valle dei Templi”, of the scientific cooperation project between the Politecnico of Milan and the Archaelogical Park of the UNESCO site “Valley of the Temples” in Agrigento, Sicily.
In recent years, he has been involved in research and development of e-learning/open learning courses and tecniques in collaboration with the METID centre within the project Polimi Open Knowledge, and with funding by the ECO European project. In particular, together with Domenico Brunetto, he has developed the first Italian Pre-Calculus MOOC course and the first Archaeoastronomy MOOC course ever produced (both are freely avaliable on www.pok.polimi.it ). Archaeoastronomy has been the first Italian MOOC exported also on the international platform COURSERA. A project for a interactive book based on this course is currently on the way with Springer.
Along with scientific activity, he developed a wide activity in the field of scientific communication, and in the period 2013-2016 he has been appointed director of the FDS laboratory for Formation and Scientific Communication of the Department of Mathematics of the Politecnico of Milan. Since 2017 he is also co-chair of the Master School on Communication of Science held at the MIP School of Management.
His researches have been reported several times on National and international TV broadcasts; in particular, CNN’ “The Revealer” devoted two documentaries to his scientific research which have been broadcasted to a worldwide audience; the first is on the work – together with Robert Hannah of Otago University - on the role of the sun in the Pantheon's project, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xicdqd_a-look-inside-the-pantheon_news the other is on Magli's 10-years researches at Giza http://backstory.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/01/the-revealer-revealed/.