PEOPLE
GALILEO GALILEI INSTITUTE: IN ARCETRI PARTICLE PHYSICS IS THEORETICAL AND INTERNATIONAL
Interview with Stefania De Curtis, director of the Galileo Galilei Institute (GGI), INFN National Centre for Advanced Studies, and research director of the INFN division of Florence.
Since December 2019, Stefania De Curtis has been managing the Galileo Galilei Institute (GGI) in Florence, an institute of excellence for training and research in theoretical physics, founded in 2006. Starting from 2018, the GGI is an INFN National Centre for Advanced Studies, in partnership with the University of Florence. GGI is located on the hill of Arcetri, a site of historical value for physics and astronomy and where Galilei spent the latter years of his life. Here, each year, over five hundred scientists from all over the world participate in conferences, advanced workshops for the theoretical physics of fundamental interactions and PhD schools dedicated to string and field theory, theoretical elementary particle physics, theoretical nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, astroparticle physics, and cosmology. This is a context of the highest scientific level, characterized by a rare concentration of multiculturalism and excellent ideas. In 2018, GGI and INFN established the Galileo Galilei Medal, that this year was awarded to Alessandra Buonanno, Thibault Damour and Frans Pretorius. This year award connects Germany, France and the United States, without forgetting the merits of Italy. We asked Stefania De Curtis to tell us about her career as a scientist and to outline the results and her vision for the future, after her first year as director of the first European institute dedicated to theoretical physics.
The GGI was founded in 2006 with the idea of continuing and encouraging the tradition that has characterised the history of the Hill of Arcetri. When did your personal story intertwine with that of GGI?
From its foundation. In 2004, Giuseppe Marchesini, President of the INFN Theoretical Physics Scientific Committee, promoted the foundation of an international research institute in Arcetri dedicated to the organisation of 2-3 months programmes on “hot” topics in theoretical physics, involving the world’s leading experts in the field. At that time, I was coordinator of the theoretical group of the INFN Florence ...
NEWS
AWARDS
GIORGIO PARISI AWARDED THE PRESTIGIOUS 2021 WOLF PRIZE FOR PHYSICS
The theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi has been awarded the prestigious 2021 Wolf Prize for Physics “for ground-breaking discoveries in disordered systems, particle physics and statistical physics”. The Wolf Prize was established by the Wolf Foundation of Israel in 1978 in recognition of scientists and artists who have produced “achievements in the interest of humanity and friendly relations between people”. ...
EUROPEAN PROJECTS
ITALY LEADS THE FIRST EUROPEAN COMPETENCE CENTER FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE
On 9 February, the 4CH - Competence Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage - project, funded with nearly 3 million euros within the scope of Horizon 2020, was launched. 4CH will be a large distributed virtual network, coordinated by Italy with INFN and managed together with a partnership of public and private entities, which includes 19 partners from 13 different countries. It will be the first ...
EXPERIMENTS
GRAN SASSO LABORATORIES: COSINUS, STUDYING THE DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE
Find experimental confirmation of the nature of dark matter: this is the challenge launched by COSINUS, a new experiment for its direct identification, which has recently received the green light for construction at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS). The concept behind the experiment was established in 2016, thanks to an idea of Karoline Schaeffner of the Max Planck Institute in ...
AWARDS
VIRGO AND LIGO IEEE MILESTONES OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
On 3 February 2021, the Virgo and LIGO gravitational wave interferometers were given the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Milestone award “for the first gravitational waves detection and the launching of the era of Multi Messenger Astronomy with the coordinated detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star merger”. The ceremony was held as a global ...
AWARDS
BUONANNO, DAMOUR AND PRETORIUS AWARDED THE 2021 GALILEO GALILEI MEDAL
Physicists Alessandra Buonanno, Thibault Damour and Frans Pretorius have been awarded the Galileo Galilei Medal, an award given every two years by INFN with the GGI Galileo Galilei Institute, its National Center for Theoretical Physics in partnership with the University of Florence, to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to the progress of research in theoretical physics. The Award, announced on 15 February, on the anniversary of the birthday of the great scientist Galileo Galilei, was awarded to Buonanno, Damour and Pretorius “for the fundamental understanding of sources ...
OPEN DATA
AUGER OBSERVATORY MAKES 10% OF DATA PUBLIC
The scientific collaboration of the Pierre Auger Observatory has decided to make public 10% of the data recorded using the world’s largest cosmic ray detector, which covers an area of approximately 3000 square kilometres in the province of Mendoza, Argentina. The goal is that the data can be used for both scientific research purposes and educational projects by a large and diverse community of users. ...
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
MASTERCLASS ITALY: HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS UNVEIL THE MYSTERIES OF PARTICLE PHYSICS
Almost 2000 high school students from all over Italy are participating in the 17th edition of the International Masterclasses organised by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG) and coordinated in Italy by INFN, despite the difficulties of this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They began on 11 February and will end on 27 March. The initiative, which this year involves 25 locations in Italy, is an opportunity for students to discover how research in particle physics works and ...
FOCUS
CSES-LIMADOU AND ITS FIRST THREE YEARS OF FLIGHT
Three years after its launch on 2 February 2018 from the Chinese Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, the CSES (China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite)-Limadou satellite mission, dedicated to Earth observation, takes stock of its first scientific results. Stemming from a collaboration between the Chinese Space Agency (CNSA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), with the important scientific contribution of INFN*, CSES-Limadou aims to develop new methods for the study of geophysical phenomena, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, on a global scale. And, to accomplish its mission, it can count on as many as nine scientific instruments set up on board the satellite, practically all the main sensors needed to study the ionosphere, magnetosphere and their possible coupling with the lithosphere, including the made-in-Italy HEPD (High Energy Particle Detector), dedicated to the observation of high energy particles and nuclei. In these three years of flight, HEPD and the set of instruments created for the study and characterisation of the plasma and the perturbations induced by solar activity, have transmitted a large amount of data that has been analysed by a highly interdisciplinary Italian collaboration**. The convergence in a single team with diverse scientific expertise, including seismology, particle physics and astrophysics, allowed important results to be obtained, presented at the most important international conferences and published in prestigious scientific journals. ...
INFORMATION AND CONTACT
Images cover
Making of the Medaglia Galileo Galilei, © INFN
Download the newsletter in pdf format
ENGLISH VERSION | ITALIAN VERSION
INFN - COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
comunicazione@presid.infn.it
+39 06 6868162
EDITORIAL BOARD
Coordination:
Francesca Scianitti
Project and contents:
Eleonora Cossi, Matteo Massicci, Anna Greco, Francesca Mazzotta, Francesca Scianitti, Antonella Varaschin
Graphic design:
Francesca Cuicchio
Translation
ALLtrad
ICT service:
Servizio Infrastrutture e Servizi Informatici Nazionali INFN