Prof. Villa has performed fundamental physics reserches in several areas of nuclear and sub-nuclear physics in large international collaborations (Obelix, Hera-B, LHC-B, Atlas). In experiments with antinucleons, he studied light meson spectroscopy in search for new and/or resonant states and he measured the branching fraction of two body decays. In p-A interactions (Hera-B), he studied charmonium states and he measured production cross sections of hadrons with open or hidden beauty. He is now involved in the design and production of a new type of luminosity monitor for the ATLAS experiment and, in the microelectronic field, he is involved in the design and realization of new types of pixel matrices to be used in the next generation of particle experiments.
Moreover he had performed phenomenological studies in different fields: he studied the solar neutrino problem, the CP symmetry violation (with a coomprehensive study of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa) and the theoretical charmonium cross sections at different energies. He has now more than 600 scientific papers published on referred journals.