Riccardo was a PostDoc at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna from 2022 through 2024.

Trained as a physicist, he completed his PhD at the University of Luxembourg. During his doctoral studies, he established a thermodynamic description valid for generic chemical systems operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium. This provided the foundations to characterize the thermodynamic efficiency of cellular biochemical processes such as metabolic networks.

By collaborating with Stanislas Leibler at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and with researchers from the Laboratory of Living Matter at the Rockefeller University, New York City, Riccardo shifted his scientific interests towards evolutionary dynamics and ecological systems. Using techniques that were first developed for thermodynamic systems, he showed how evolution by natural selection may make organisms intrinsically robust to perturbation such as mutations.

He has also been investigating population dynamics in laboratory microbial ecosystems, and is fascinated by the complexity of soil ecosystems. In the latter context, he aims at understanding the principles that regulate the organization of life in soil.