Professor Eugenio Coccia, Rector of the School of Advanced Studies “Gran Sasso Science Institute” in L’Aquila, is an experimental physicist recognized for the development of gravitational wave observatories and is one of the authors of the discovery of gravitational waves. He graduated in Physics, cum laude, from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1980 in the group of Edoardo Amaldi; he has been Fellow at CERN and professor of physics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. He spent long periods of research at CERN, at INFN Frascati Laboratory and at the University of Leiden. He has directed the EXPLORER experiment at CERN and the NAUTILUS experiment at the INFN Frascati Laboratories. He has been Director of the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory, President of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitational Physics and Chair of the Gravitational Wave International Committee. He has given lectures and seminars in Universities and research centers all over the world and has been invited to be a member of international panels on the strategies of particle and astroparticle physics by CERN, the OECD Global Science Forum and the US National Academy of Science. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and Fellow of the European Physical Society.