Sagnotti earned a
Laurea in Electrical Engineering from the
University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1978 (advisors: Bruno Crosignani and Paolo Di Porto); and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from
Caltech in 1983 (advisor: John H. Schwarz). He was Post-Doctoral Fellow at Caltech (1983–84) and Miller Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley (1984–86). Sagnotti was Junior Faculty at the
University of Rome "Tor Vergata" from 1986 to 1994, then Associate Professor (1994–99) and Professor (2000-2005). Moreover, he was the first to propose, in 1987, that the
type I string theory can be obtained as an
orientifold of
type IIB string theory, and offered the elucidation of the key properties of orientifold constructions and of Conformal Field Theory on non-orientable surfaces. He also discovered the
10D "0B' string", including both
open and closed strings, non supersymmetric but free of
tachyons. He has worked extensively on higher spins, arriving at a geometric formulation of their free field equations in terms of higher-spin curvatures. More recently, Sagnotti has been working on the proposal of a possible link between "
brane supersymmetry breaking", and the onset of the
inflationary phase, and on the exploration of some of its possible imprints on the
CMB, in particular, the proposal that the low value of the CMB quadrupole and a first peak for l ~5 be a manifestation of the onset of the inflationary phase. Sagnotti also suggested to his student Kirill Zatrimaylov that elongated mass distributions far away from galactic planes could contribute to explain the flatness of galaxy rotation curves that is normally attributed to dark matter. This proposal was developed in Zatrimaylov's PhD thesis: the rotation curves of several galaxies appear compatible with string-like filaments passing through their centers, as opposed to spherical halos. == Awards and honors ==