Maurizio Gasperini is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Physics Department of the University of Bari, Italy. He is currently author of 150 publications on gravitational theory, high-energy physics, and cosmology, and has twice the "Awards for Essays on Gravitation" from the Gravity Research Foundation (1996 and 1998). Former positions include a permanent position of researcher at the Department of Theoretical Physics of the University of Turin, and two appointments as Scientific Associate at CERN, Theory Division (1993 and 1996), where in collaboration with Gabriele Veneziano has formulated and developed an early-cosmology scenario based on the duality symmetries of string theory.