Elisabetta Barbi is Associate Professor of Demography at Sapienza University of Rome since 2008. She graduated in Statistics at Sapienza in 1995 and received a PhD in Demography from Florence University in 1999. After obtaining a one-year post-doc scholarship at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) of Rostock-Germany, and a two-years research scholarship at Sapienza, she worked as Research Scientist at MPIDR from 2002 to 2004. From 2005 to 2008 she was Associate Professor of Demography at Messina University. She currently teaches "Demography" and "Methods of Demographic Analysis and Forecasts". She is the coordinator of the curriculum of Demography within the PhD program of Statistical Sciences at Sapienza University since 2012. She has been the Italian representative at the multinational PhD program Demo-Doc 2011-2013 (http://www.demodoc.uni-rostock.de). She is a member of the Editorial Board of "Demographic Research Monographs" (Springer-Verlag), and of the scientific journals "Genus" and "Popolazione e Storia". She is member of the Italian Association for Population Studies/Italian Statistical Society. Since 2008, she collaborates to the Laboratory of Longevity and Survival of MPIDR as Research Scholar. Her recent research work focuses on parametric and semi-parametric models for the statistical analysis of mortality surfaces, with applications to the study of period and cohort effects on elderly mortality, and to the analysis of the variability in human longevity.