conti was born in palmanova, italy. he received his laurea degree in physics from the university of trieste, italy, with a thesis titled “binary galaxies in the harvard-smithsonian center for astrophysics (cfa) redshift survey.” during the following two years, he worked on the largest sample (at the time) of optical rotation curves of galaxies at the international school for advanced studies (sissa), in trieste. there he developed algorithms to automate the extraction of physical parameters from galactic rotation curves, paving the way for the analysis of much larger samples. he has since specialized in statistical methods, computational astrophysics, and large datasets.