PEOPLE

OCTOBER 2016

STRATEGY AND ROLE OF EVALUATION OF RESEARCH AND THIRD MISSION AT INFN
Interview with Giorgio Chiarelli, coordinator of the INFN Working Group on Evaluation and ANVUR expert for evaluation of the Third Mission


Since 1997, INFN has entrusted the evaluation of its research activities to an International Evaluation Committee (CVI), composed of seven experts from different countries, including an expert in economics and a representative of the industrial world. The report of the CVI, in addition to the evaluation aspects, also contains proposals aimed at improving the overall performance of the institution. Since 2000, in order to prepare the documentation for the CVI, and to coordinate the response to its (CVI) suggestions, the internal evaluation of research is coordinated by the Evaluation Working Group (GLV), which –among other things- evaluates the milestones proposed annually by individual experiments, the impact of the Institution's participation in international experiments and the degree of leadership exerted by INFN researchers. In addition, the GLV reports to the CVI on Third Mission activities, in terms of economic exploitation of research and production of public goods of a social, educational and cultural nature. Testifying the growing impact of the Third Mission on the research system is the fact that the National Agency of University and Research System Evaluation (ANVUR) has included these activities in carrying out the Research Quality Evaluation (VQR). We discussed these issues with Giorgio Chiarelli, since 2012 National Coordinator of the GLV and, since 2015, national expert of the Third Mission evaluation for ANVUR.

 

What is the purpose of internal research evaluation?

With a quip I could say: to improve ourselves. The (self-)evaluation of our activities is inherent in INFN's DNA. Every experiment, within the individual National Scientific Committees (CSN), has its own referees who follow it right from the proposal phase. This discussion is useful: there are observations, sometimes criticism, but always constructive. In addition, the referees often intervene to understand if there are any problems and to help. Even if an important part of our research takes place abroad, and is therefore nevertheless subject to the scrutiny of structures outside the Institution, ...

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NEWS

OCTOBER 2016


SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION

WASHINGTON: BILATERAL MEETING BETWEEN INFN AND DOE-NSF

On 3rd and 4th October, the bilateral meeting for scientific cooperation between INFN, represented by the President, Fernando Ferroni, and by the Executive Committee, the Department Of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) was held in Washington. ...

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INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION ANNOUNCES EMSO-ERIC CONSORTIUM

The European Commission announced the EMSO-ERIC (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory European Research Infrastructure Consortium). The Consortium is made up by eight founding countries: France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and UK; the head office will be based in Rome. ...

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PROJECTS

INFN PARTNER IN FOUR WINNING
PRIN PROJECTS

Four projects in which INFN is partner have won PRIN (Projects of Relevant National Interest) 2015 calls. Three are in the physics field. The "Non-perturbative Aspects of Gauge Theories And Strings" project. A theoretical physics project which has the objective of developing and applying non-perturbative methods in field and string theory. ...

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FOCUS ON


n_TOF: THE MYSTERY HIDDEN IN THE FIRST THREE MINUTES OF LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE

It is a mystery that has lasted now for half a century. And that dates back to the beginnings of the universe. To its first three minutes of life after the Big Bang. A time space during which the lighter and more abundant elements in the universe were formed. Something, however, is not quite right. Lithium. The estimate of the theoretical models is more abundant by a factor of three compared to that inferred by observations. It is the so-called cosmological lithium problem. The so-called Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) theoretical model, in fact, accounts with considerable precision for the observed abundance of light elements and their isotopes in the cosmos. The observed quantities of deuterium and helium compared to hydrogen fully reflect the BBN predictions. When it comes to lithium, however, the observed value is three times lower than expected. Physicists from the n_TOF Collaboration at CERN, in which INFN researchers are participating, have addressed it by performing complex measurements on beryllium. n_TOF is a pulsed neutron source coupled to two flight paths at 200 and 20 meters designed to study neutron-nucleus interactions for neutron kinetic energies ranging from a few meV to several GeV. The neutron kinetic energy is determined by time-of-flight, hence the name n_TOF. The study of these reactions is of large importance in a wide variety of research fields, including the stellar nucleosynthesis. The new results of n_TOF collaboration have already led to a publication in the Physical Review Letters (PRL). The study, due to its importance, was also selected by the journal as the "Editors' Suggestion". The n_TOF researchers chose beryllium (7Be), because cosmological lithium is almost exclusively produced by its decay in the so-called BBN. ...

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CONTACT



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INFORMATION


cover image:

A detail of n_TOF experiment.Source: The n_TOF collaboration.

 

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