After working as a research associate at Duke University from 1959 to 1969, he returned to Milan for the remainder of his academic career, except for a spell in Geneva at CERN (1979–82).
In the 1970s he collaborated with André Lagarrigue to create the Gargamelle detector, a giant bubble chamber at CERN, and with Carlo Rubbia and Riccardo Giacconi on neutrino experiments that contributed to the discovery of weak neutral currents, thereby providing the first empirical test of the electroweak theory.
[6] In subsequent decades he was involved with two far larger collaborations at underground facility of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso: the CUORICINO[7] and CUORE[8][9] studies of 130Te.
[2] In the 1980s he directed the NUSEX (Nucleon Stability Experiment) investigation of proton decay located in the Mont Blanc underground laboratory.
NUSEX helped determine the limits of proton stability, applying innovative methods to correct for the background effects of cosmic rays.