Born in 1949, Marino Gatto is Professor of Ecology, Faculty of Civil, Environmental and Land Use Engineering, Polytechnical School of Milan. His cultural background is engineering and mathematical modelling and his research has entirely focussed on ecology and management of renewable resources since 1974.
The turning point of his career occurred in 1974 when he became a research fellow in the Ecology Group of IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), Laxenburg, Austria. In 1976 he joined the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, for about one year.

Professional Appointments:
1978: Assistant Professor of System Theory, University of Naples
1978-1982: Assistant Professor of Optimal Control, Politecnico di Milano and University of Pavia
1983-1987: Associate Professor of Applied Ecology, Politecnico di Milano
1987 - present: Professor of Ecology, Politecnico di Milano
1987: visiting Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
1997-2001 and 2006-2007: visiting Professor, Département de biologie , Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
1991-1999: chair of the Program in Environmental and Land Use Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
2003-2006: president of the Italian Society of Ecology.
2007-2010: member of the Academic Senate of the Politecnico di Milano
2009-present: member of the executive board of the Laboratory on Energy and Environment (LEAP), Politecnico di Milano

Teaching:
Undergraduate course: Ecology, program in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering
Graduate courses: Conservation and management of ecosystems, M.S. in Environmental and Land Planning Engineering; Spatial models in Biology, Ph.D. program in Information Engineering
Director of the course Global change and sustainability, program of the Alta Scuola Politecnica (Politecnico’s School of Excellence).

Professional Affiliations:
Società Italiana di Ecologia
Ecological Society of America
American Society of Naturalists

Awards, Honors, National And International Service:
1989: NATO Visiting fellow, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Department of Ecology and Evolution
1997: short-term visiting scholar, Department of Ecology and Evolution, Princeton University
1993-present: associate editor, Theoretical Population Biology
1997-present: editor, Ecology and Society (formerly Conservation Ecology)
1998-present: editor, Biologia e Conservazione della Fauna
1997: Anassilaos award for environmental sciences
2002: Focus award for his studies on energy and the environment
2003-present: member of the scientific committee, WWF Italy
2007: elected to the Istituto Lombardo, Accademia di Scienze e Lettere
2008: elected to the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti
Plenary lecturer in several national and international conferences
Reviewer for conferences and journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ecology, Ecological Modelling, Vegetatio, Theoretical Population Biology, Journal of Mathematical Biology, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Acta Oecologica, Marine Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology and American Naturalist

M. Gatto has authored or coauthored more than 190 publications (articles, books, book chapters). About 90  have appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Proceedings of the Royal Society, BioScience, The American Naturalist, Ecological Applications, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Journal of theoretical Biology.
His current research interests include: dynamics and management of marine resources, models of fragmented populations, extinction risk assessment of wildlife populations, climate change ecology, parasite ecology, ecological economics.