Roberto Battiston, former President of the Italian Space Agency and professor of experimental physics at the University of Trento, will be awarded the Hall of Fame Award by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF). 
This prestigious award is given to personalities who have contributed substantially to the progress of space science, technology, and space benefits to humankind.
The awarding ceremony will take place in Washington on 25 October, during the closing ceremony of the 70th International Astronautical Congress (IAC).
Battiston is the second Italian to receive this honour; before him, it had been awarded to Paolo Ferri, head of flight operations at the European Space Agency (Esa).
The IAF so far nominated 20 scientists to the Hall of Fame, including Edward Stone of NASA, who supervised the Voyager mission, Manfred Fuchs, the founder of OHB, a top German space company, and Charles Bolden, astronaut and former administrator of NASA.
Roberto Battiston
He led the Italian Space Agency (ASI) from 2014 to 2018, giving a new breath to Italian space activities at national and international level, and chaired the National Scientific Committee of INFN on astroparticle physics. From 2009 to 2014 professor Battiston worked intensively in space research, with physics Nobel prize laureate Samuel C. C. Ting, for example, on the creation of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, the experiment module that measures antimatter mounted on the International space station, and was responsible for the Chinese-Italian collaboration on the Chinese satellite CSES through the Limadou project (Matteo Ricci), whose mission was to find new techniques for seismic monitoring from space.
For his work, Battiston received the Legion of Honour and the Vladimir Syromyatnikov Award. He was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Mattarella.