NEXT GENERATION EU: THE ITALIAN NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SUPERCOMPUTING IS BORN

Interview with Antonio Zoccoli, president of INFN and new president of ICSC Foundation - Italian Research Center on High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing

The governing bodies of the ICSC Foundation*, which will manage one of the five National Centres established by Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) were installed on 19 July. Thus, the National Research Center in High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing was born. The centre was proposed by INFN and 51 founding members distributed throughout the country, coming from the public and private sectors, from the world of scientific research and industry. The new National Centre will be based at Tecnopolo in Bologna, an innovation hub promoted by the Emilia-Romagna Region, in part thanks to investment from the Italian Government and European Union. The hub already hosts the Data Center of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and will shortly welcome the Leonardo supercomputer managed by CINECA and by INFN Computing Centre. The project will create a network and system of specific expertise, competences, and resources of firms that operate throughout Italy in many fields. The aim is to build a distributed, cross-organisation infrastructure that supports scientific research and the production world in innovating and digitalising the country. To complete its mission, ICSC will count on EU Next Generation funds, as part of the PNRR’s Education and Research Mission coordinated by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR), of € 319,938,979.26 of which 41% will be invested in the south. In particular, of the overall funding, more than € 100 million will be dedicated to staff, an investment that is considered a priority, with female participation of at least 40%, and with almost € 16 million reserved for PhD scholarships and, thus, youth higher training and careers. ICSC, in line with the PNRR’s strategic goals, will implement its specific goals by promoting the careers of young people and initiatives for overcoming the gender gap in professional careers and the gap between the north and south of the country. During the first plenary assembly, which was hosted in the Emilia Romagna Region’s headquarters, the founding members of ICSC elected Antonio Zoccoli, INFN president, to the presidency of the Foundation, and the ten members of the Board of Directors**. We asked Antonio Zoccoli, newly elected president of the ICSC Foundation to tell us about the project. ...

INFN was the promoter of the proposal for the national centre for supercomputing. The proposal was evaluated and then selected by MUR to be implemented within the context of the PNRR. How did we achieve this positive outcome?

The big science experiments, from those in high-energy physics to those in astroparticle physics, are characterised by the production of big data, i.e. large quantities of data that must be stored, shared, and analysed. Working in the main big science projects globally has, therefore, enabled INFN to develop, over time, long and consolidated experience in terms of managing data and the necessary infrastructure to do so.

RESEARCH

FIRST RESULTS FROM XENONNT

The natural show represented by the hypnotic and changing figures drawn in the sky by the coordinated and synchronised movements of starlings is the result of a collective behaviour that many bird species can adopt to promptly respond to attacks from their predators.

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RESEARCH

LHCB OBSERVES THREE NEW EXOTIC PARTICLES; THEIR PRESENTATION AT ICHEP 2022 IN BOLOGNA

The LHCb international collaboration has observed a new type of ‘pentaquark’ and the first pair of ‘tetraquarks’, consisting of two quarks and two antiquarks, which, in turn, includes a tetraquark never observed before. The discovery was made thanks to an analysis wholly conducted by Italian researchers working at INFN and at the University of Milan.

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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES

BOLOGNA WORLD CAPITAL OF PHYSICS WITH ICHEP 2022

The most important international particle physics conference - ICHEP 2022 (International Conference on High Energy Physics) – was held for the first time in Italy, in Bologna, from 7 to 13 July. 1126 scientists arrived in Bologna from tens of countries to participate in the event, in person, 297 researchers joined the conference online from throughout the world and 943 pieces of research were presented, as well as 331 project posters.

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AWARD

2022 VIRGO AWARD GOES TO FRANCESCO DI RENZO, ELEONORA POLINI, AND MARCO VARDARO

The young researchers Francesco Di Renzo, University of Pisa and INFN Pisa Division, Eleonora Polini, of the LAPP/IN2P3 laboratory of the French CNRS, and Marco Vardaro, University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands’ National Institute for Subatomic Physics (NIKHEF), are the winners of the second edition of the Virgo Award.

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SPACE TECHNOLOGIES

THE LARES-2 MISSION KICKS OFF

The flight of the Vega C, the new-generation, light launcher of the European Space Agency, took off with success on 13 July at 3:13 p.m. (Italy time) from the Kourou spaceport in French Guyana. It marks the beginning of the LARES-2 mission (LAser RElativity Satellite 2), the main tool on board the European rocket, which has reached its operational orbit, positioned at approximately 6,000 km from Earth, one hour and 24 minutes from its launch.

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