He has large experience in collaborative research at the national and international level. In particular he has coordinated two EU projects, GLOBALDIV (GenRes, 2007-2009) and ECONOGENE (FP5-2002-2004) and participated as Partner in other 5 in FP4, FP5m FP6 and Horizon2020. In FP7 he contributed to the process of call amendment and project approval as member of the EU Programme Committee in Area 2: Agriculture Biotechnology and Fishery. He has several international collaborations beyond Europe, particularly in South America, Asia and Africa, as scientific Advisor of FAO/IAEA projects. In Italy he is member of the Central Technical Commission of the Italian Holstein-Friesian and Jersey cattle breeder association; (ANAFIJ Cremona, Italy). He has been recently appointed member of the Accademia dei Georgofili (Florence, Italy), an Academy founded more than 250 years ago that aims at fostering the progress of science applied to agriculture. He also dedicates part of his time to editorial activity as section editor of Genetics Selection Evolution and Genes and guest editor of Frontiers in Genetics. According to Scopus he has more than 160 publication H-Index=40 and more than 6000 citations.