Michele Parrinello (born 7 September 1945, Messina) is an Italian physicist particularly known for his work in molecular dynamics (the computer simulation of physical movements of atoms and molecules). Parrinello and Roberto Car were awarded the Dirac Medal and the Sidney Fernbach Award in 2009 for their continuing development of the Car-Parrinello method, first proposed in their seminal 1985 paper, "Unified Approach for Molecular Dynamics and Density-Functional Theory