The scientific activity of the group is organized around several topics in the area of star and planet formation, which involves both an observational approach supported by the development of innovative instrumentation. 

The structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks, the star/disk and planet/disk interactions, the interplay of the central young star with its circumstellar environment, as well as the conditions for the formation of protoplanets drive our interests. We look at young stars in the low-mass to high-mass regime and employ a variety of high-resolution techniques such as interferometry and direct imaging to probe the physics of these objects from the optical to mid-infrared regime. We are also interested in the characterization of sub-stellar objects (brown dwarfs) and ultimately exoplanets. In this context, the GRAVITY Young Stellar Objects Survey has been one of the most recent collaborative effort to study the innermost regions of circumstellar disks. Finally, close binary stars are surveyed to constrain dynamical masses and the processes of star formation, possibly in different environmental conditions characterized by sub-solar (Magellanic clouds), solar (Galactic clusters) and super-solar (Galactic Center) metallicity.

To support our science objectives, our group is engaged in an active instrumentation program that focuses primarily on novel ground-based instrumentation for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Paranal and for the future Extremly Large Telescope (ELT) on Cerro Armazones.