Politecnico is at the top of the world rankings of universities also thanks to the frontier scientific research it carries out in its laboratories. The protagonists of this Italian record are the approximately 3,500 scientists and researchers of Politecnico. Among the hottest topics are obviously those related to the systemic transformation towards climate neutrality; and then, the world of digital, space exploration, life sciences, the movements embraced by the New European Bauhaus, the new frontiers in the study of matter... In particular, young researchers inject new life into the research system and grow innovative scientific strands. Politecnico invests in activities aimed precisely at encouraging young scientists of excellence to join in. Among many, this year we welcome twelve new young researchers who are among the best of their generation. They are here at Politecnico di Milano thanks to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellowship programme. Let us introduce them... in alphabetical order.
HERNÁN BOBADILLA BOBADILLA is a philosopher of science with a background in geology and transdisciplinary research interests. He tells us: "There is a relatively new approach in the study of extreme climate events, known as the storyline approach. It can lead to relevant insights into extreme climate events under conditions of profound uncertainty. It is intended as a complement to traditional methodologies, but often meets with significant resistance among scientists”. Bobadilla intends to test the legitimacy of the storyline approach by exploring the various ways in which the approach to the plot and the philosophy of scientific understanding can corroborate each other.
According to the architect who designed the Science Gateway: “At a certain age, the only way to survive yourself is to work with young people”. Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN: “In the night sky you look at the stars, we have to look into the emptiness and darkness”
Renzo Piano says he has worked with neuroscientists, with astrophysicists, now with particle physicists,and each time he has seen the same thing: “Human beings always dig deep, but at a certain point they stop when they get to the mystery. As Marguerite Yourcenar once said, the human being looks into the darkness, without looking away. And if you look into the darkness, at first you see nothing; then your eyes slowly get used to it. Because that darkness is not empty, it is inhabited by everything you have seen, read, heard and are about to imagine,, with that sublime stubbornness without which you never get to the heart of things. The important thing is to apply it to the right things”.
The new CERN, which will open on 7 October, began before the pandemic, on the day when the world's most important Italian woman — director-general Fabiola Gianotti — went to Paris to visit the world's most famous Italian man, Renzo Piano, , and his wife Milly, and asked for advice on a new building: “Every year we receive 150,000 visitors and turn away another 150,000. We need more space to tell students, teachers and anyone interested, who we are and what we do, the beauty and usefulness of physics. A gateway to science. I understand, Renzo, that you are very busy, I already have designs from some local architects, but please, give me some advice”. At the end of the meeting, Milly Piano accompanied Fabiola Gianotti to the taxi and told her: “I think Renzo wants to do this”.
Back in time
The construction site is almost finished, and it is called Science Gateway: precisely, the gateway to science. Renzo Piano designed a two-hundred-metre-long bridge, “almost a space laboratory landing”, which passes over the road and the border between Switzerland and France, and joins five structures. first is a 900-seat auditorium, which will be dedicated to Sergio Marchionne. The second — Piano explains— isa piece of what lies beneath, brought to the surface: the giant, 27-kilometre-long particle accelerator.Visitors will be able to see and understand how protons collide almost as fast as the speed of light. It is the mechanism that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, known as the God particle. It is the closest humans have ever come to the mystery. “Einstein said that time is an illusion, — recalls Renzo Piano -- Our time can pass by very slowly or very quickly, our lives are very long and very short.
Borges wrote: "Time is the substance I am made of. It is a river which sweeps me along but I am the river. It is the tiger which destroys me but I am the tiger. It is a fire which consumes me but I am the fire”. The Big Bang, the explosion from which our universe was born, happened 13.8 billion years ago, a time we cannot even fathom; and it lasted an infinitely small amount of time that we cannot even grasp”.
Al Cern they went back in time to one millionth of a millionth of a second before the Big Bang..And they have managed to reproduce the same conditions as back then, the same temperature, a hundred trillion times higher than the temperature of this summer, which is sweltering even here in Geneva. Physicists have understood the how, not the why. What happened, not who did it. That is, if the 'Creator' exists. The other facilities are dedicated precisely to the study of the Big Bang and the quantum world.Renzo Piano has designed a building that breathes: “The air conditioning goes up through these little holes in the floor,we have planted four hundred trees all over, on the roof there are state-of-the-art solar panels; more energy is produced than is consumed.» There is also a facility dedicated to contemporary art: because, here, art and science are connected.
The render of the Science Gateway designed by Renzo Piano: the architect designed a 200-metre bridge as “a space laboratory landing” that passes over the road and the Swiss-French border (copyright RPBW)
The canteen and the glasses
CERN director-general arrives with her tray in hand and it is like being hit by a beam of protons. Imagine Rita Levi Montalcini with Enrico Mentana’s quick speaking and wit. “Your glasses have broken”. An arm came off, I will have to go to the opticians when I return to Italy. “Doesn’t matter, we have 3D printers! Give it here”. Everyone calls her by her first name, Fabiolà, pronounced in the French style. pHowever, she is very Italian: her father is from Asti, Piedmont (he lived to 101 years), her mother is from Palermo, Sicily (92 years), she was born in Rome, obtained her degree and PhD in Physics in Milan. She has been here forever: she came to CERN as a girl on a scholarship and never left. On the shelf in the control room are lined up empty bottles of champagne, used to celebrate great achievements. One photo reads the date '4 July 2012', discovery of the Higgs boson. “On that day,” Fabiola Gianotti tells, “CERN achieved the goal for which it was created in 1954: to bring the primacy of experimental physics back to Europe. We are now ahead of the United States. Americans and Chinese come to us”.
“I went to humanities high school, and it's not true what they say about Italian schools.Italian schools are still excellent today, here out of 17,000 scientists of a hundred and ten nationalities 2,500 are Italians, and they arrived by merit.. In high school, I studied physics a little bit; but I had a teacher who explained how physics works, how things work. And the fundamental physics is simple and elegant, based on principles of symmetry. But we exist because symmetry is not perfect. If matter and antimatter were present in equal parts in the universe, they would have annihilated, destroyed each other; and we would not exist.Instead, antimatter for some strange reason has disappeared; at CERN we are studying it, to find out what happened to it. In the night sky you look up at the stars. But stars, planets and matter only make up 5% of the universe. We have to look into the emptiness and darkness. I studied piano as a girl, still today I spend my Saturday afternoons playing. Many people ask me: why did you do something so different in life? But that's not true: “I find physics in music and music in physics”. Pope Francis wanted her in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. "I came from a Catholic background. But physics can never prove or rule out the existence of God”. What about extraterrestrial life? “God most probably exists. Because it is very unlikely that on any other planet in a huge universe the conditions that made life possible on Earth have been reproduced. But it could be a very different life form from ours”.How do you envision afterlife? "Like an immense space, in which I hope individualities are not lost; because we are all so different, so interesting. Ah, here, your glasses are ready, see the new titanium arms? You no longer have to go to the opticians”.
Some of Renzo Piano's great works
Inside the Cave
With Piano we descend into the cave where it all happens: about one hundred metres underground, inside the ATLAS detector, where the Higgs boson was discovered and is now being studied. The detectors are the places where the collisions occurring in the 27-kilometre-long accelerator, which protons travel through eleven thousand times in a second, are 'photographed'; now there are plans for a new 90-kilometre-long accelerator, to be run under Lake Geneva. One enters with eye recognition, a detail that inspired Dan Brown's terrifying opening words in 'Angels and Demons'. The lift is fast, but seen from below from the shaft the huge machine is impressive.
«“Here we do not only study particles”, says Piano. From CERN came the word wide web, in short the www, and it was gifted to the world. This is where the technologies of PET and new cancer treatments were created. Superconducting cables are made in order not to waste energy. In New York, Piano built the centre for neuroscience at Columbia University, the MBB — Mind Brain Behaviour —, for the study of the mind, the brain, behaviour; now he is building 'Climate Change', the new building where the climate revolution will be studied. "Everything is held. The sciences work together. Scientists collaborate, because they have realised that we are at a turning point in the history of mankind, and it is wrong to describe this time only as a great crisis. Wonderful things happen, great discoveries are made, solutions are found. It is precisely in the fields of science, medicine, climatology, but also human solidarity, that we are witnessing the somewhat tentative emergence, around the world,of a fluid network of global affinities. That they will be the salvation of our planet”.». Here even physicists walk around with screwdrivers in their pockets, and many are under 30 years old."I work among young people, and I assure you that they are extraordinary. The only way to survive yourself, at a certain age and with a long journey behind them, is to work with them..We old men must behave like the Japanese masters of the Ise temple, which is rebuilt every twenty years. Young people come, between the ages of 20 and 40 they learn how to build the temple, from 40 to 60 they build the temple, and from 60 to 80 they teach how to build the temple”.
Renzo Piano will be 86 in a few days, and he said he wanted to die on the construction site. Not in this case, though,the lift goes up the shaft, back to the warmth of the surface, back into the Science Gateway. "CERN has a budget of 1.2 billion, but the new building is only the result of donations and costs less than 100 million: that is less than the daily cost of a bomber that wreaks death and destruction”. Piano tells that his job is to build places of peace, be they museums, concert halls, universities, research laboratories, hospitals like the ones he did in Africa with his friend Gino Strada. "We are all embarked on the same spaceship, with an unknown destination. Waging war against each other is like fighting on a bus. All the more so in Europe, which is a widespread big city: because the opposite of the city is not the countryside, it is the desert; and in Europe there are no deserts”.
One thousand Russian and one hundred Ukrainian scientists work at CERN, and they prodigiously continue to collaborate. Among the member states is Israel, which offers scholarships to Palestinian researchers. “In architecture today, the aim is to provide shelter for communities", Piano explains, "and for this we also need primary beauty, not in the caricatured sense that the word has taken on: beauty, beauté, brings to mind a beauty parlour. The good we must recover is the 'kalòs' of the Greeks, which is also the good. ‘I swear to return Athens to the Athenians more beautiful than you delivered it to me’: the oath of politicians in the time of Pericles should also be ours”.
A study resulting from a collaboration between the Department of Energy and the Department of Physics at the Politecnico di Milano and supported by an interdisciplinary Ph.D. led by Silvia Rotta Loria has been published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials as a cover article.
The study explains the origin of the superfast optical response of titanium nitride (TiN). This material, already known for its refractory properties, is also attracting increasing interest because of its fast response to photo-excitation and the possibility of controlling its optical and electronic properties during synthesis.
TiN films have already been used for thermo-photovoltaic devices, for artificial photosynthesis or for micro super-capacitors on chips. Moreover, TiN is compatible with technologies used in digital electronics. Overall, it is therefore a material with great potential for the development of ultrafast photonic devices.
The study was carried out thanks to the synergy between two Departments of the Politecnico: TiN films were made in the NanoLab (Micro and Nanostructured Materials Lab) of the Department of Energy, they were then characterised in the ultrafast spectroscopy laboratories of the Department of Physics, and the experimental data were interpreted using a model developed in the Department of Physics.
This collaboration has made it possible to study in depth a material of great technological interest and to clarify the origin of its peculiar response to light excitation, which can be engineered through the manufacturing procedure
explains Prof. Margherita Zavelani Rossi, Department of Energy, co-author of the article.
Thanks to the accurate numerical model developed, it is now possible to determine how the response of a titan nitride thin film can be controlled by light itself; a fundamental knowledge for the development of new miniaturised opto-electronic and photonic devices
adds Prof. Giuseppe Della Valle, Department of Physics, co-author of the article.
The experimentation mentioned in the article is one of the outcomes of the METAFAST project funded by the European Union's H2020-FET-OPEN programme, coordinated by Prof. Giuseppe Della Valle. The project aims to develop a new class of ultrafast optical devices based on special nanostructured surfaces (called nonlinear metasurfaces).
To find out more, the study signed by Silvia Rotta Loria, Beatrice Roberta Bricchi, Andrea Schirato, Luca Mascaretti, Cristina Mancarella, Alberto Naldoni, Andrea Li Bassi, Giuseppe Della Valle and Margherita Zavelani-Rossi is online.
Using fibre optic sensors to monitor water networks against wastage: the international journal Sensors published the results of an experiment carried out at Politecnico di Milano aimed at optimising the water network.
Researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering pioneered the use of distributed fibre optic sensing (DFOS) based on Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) technology for monitoring water pipeline networks over long distances. At the heart of this technology is the common and inexpensive optical fibre used for telecommunications (which brings the internet into our homes) capable of measuring deformations to a hundredth of a millimetre.
I ricercatori del Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale hanno sperimentato l’uso di sensori distribuiti in fibra ottica (DFOS) basati sulla tecnologia Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) per il monitoraggio delle reti di condotte idriche su lunghe distanze. Alla base di questa tecnologia c’è la comune ed economica fibra ottica per le telecomunicazioni (che porta internet nelle nostre case) in grado di misurare deformazioni al centesimo di millimetro.
The experiment consisted of two phases. ‘In the first one,’ the researchers explain, ‘we assessed the sensitivity of the sensor layout on an HDPE pipe stressed with static pressure. This first stage was successful, so we then concentrated on detecting the pressure anomaly produced by a leak in a piping circuit with flowing water. Overall, the results returned positive feedback on the use of DFOS, confirming the possibility of identifying and localising even very small water leaks.
In the future, the tested technology will be further developed towards industrial-scale production of 'natively smart' HDPE pipes, where DFOS are integrated into the pipe surface during the extrusion process.
The study, signed by Manuel Bertulessi, Daniele Fabrizio Bignami, Ilaria Boschini, Marina Longoni, Giovanni Menduni and Jacopo Morosi, is available at this link.
Water resource wastage is a global issue, increasingly exacerbated by the impact of climate change on the hydrological chain. In Italy, more than one third of the water fed into the national distribution network is wasted, according to ISTAT data from 2022. Widespread monitoring and efficient maintenance of the infrastructure are therefore two strategic and urgent actions.
I mhackeroni, la squadra italiana di hacker etici composta da studenti ed ex studenti universitari provenienti da tutta Italia, hanno trionfato nella Hack-A-Sat 4, la competizione focalizzata sulla sicurezza dei sistemi spaziali organizzata da United States Air Force e United States Space Force, l’aeronautica militare e il dipartimento della difesa spaziale degli Stati Uniti.
Si tratta di un risultato di eccezionale importanza che dimostra l’altissimo grado di competenza del team italiano nell’ambito della sicurezza informatica spaziale.
Le fasi preliminari della competizione hanno coinvolto oltre 350 squadre di tutto il mondo; i mhackeroni, il cui gruppo più ampio è composto da studenti del Politecnico di Milano, sono stati tra i 5 team qualificati alla finale, tenutasi a Las Vegas dall’11 al 13 agosto 2023, in occasione della prestigiosa conferenza sulla sicurezza informatica Def Con.
Durante la fase finale i team in gara si sono sfidati cercando di prendere il controllo del satellite orbitante americano Moonlighter, i mhackeroni sono stati in grado di violarne i sistemi di sicurezza, facendolo ruotare e scattare foto.
Competizioni come Hack-A-Sat sono particolarmente significative perché danno modo agli esperti di sicurezza informatica valutare l’effettiva tenuta dei loro protocolli e le vulnerabilità potenzialmente sfruttabili da hacker ostili.
Durante i giorni di Def Con i mhackeroni sono stati inoltre tra i 12 prota
The activities of the FORMOSA (FunctiOnal aiRcraft MOveable SurfAces) project, launched in 2020 to redesign the wing control surfaces of the NextGen Civil TiltRotor (NGCTR-TD) civil tiltrotor produced by Leonardo, have recently come to an end.
A tiltrotor is a hybrid aircraft that combines the characteristics of a helicopter with those of an airplane. The architecture of tiltrotors features two rotors, placed at the wingtips, which can rotate allowing the aircraft to take off (and land) vertically and, once the take-off manoeuvre is complete, rotate forward to turn into propellers, producing the thrust for flight, as in a classic propeller plane.
The project, co-ordinated by Prof. Vincenzo Muscarello (Department of Aerospace Science and Technology) and funded by the European Clean Sky 2 programme, has made it possible to reduce the load of wakes on the wings in helicopter mode (-9% compared to the original project), enabling a reduction in fuel consumption during vertical take-off and landing manoeuvres. In addition, a significant improvement in roll performance was achieved during flight in airplane mode, thanks to a 25 per cent reduction in the time-to-bank, the time needed to reach the required turning angle.
The NextGen Civil TiltRotor is a technology demonstrator designed by Leonardo as part of the European Clean Sky 2 programme and created to meet, among other things, the growing need for air mobility in densely populated urban areas, offering the opportunity to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, together with the high speed distance capability typical of airplanes.
The FORMOSA (FunctiOnal aiRcraft MOveable SurfAces) consortium consists of a group of young researchers from Politecnico di Milano and a team of engineers from the Portuguese company CEiiA (Centre of Engineering and Product Development).
Biomethanol from biogas, but also from woody biomass. This was the challenge won by Politecnico di Milano and Fattoria Autonoma Tabacchi S.C.
The BIGSQUID (biogas-to-liquid) technology was presented in Rome on 13 July during the Confagricoltura Annual Meeting 'For over 100 years we have been imagining the future. Together with agricultural enterprises to make Italy grow'.
It was devised by the Centre for Sustainable Process Engineering Research (SuPER) guided by Flavio Manenti, Full Professor of Chemical Plants of the 'Giulio Natta' Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering, and patented by the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) of Politecnico di Milano. BIGSQUID technology was proposed for engineering and industrialisation to Fattoria Autonoma Tabacchi S.C., headed by Dr. Fabio Rossi.
It is a technological alternative to biogas and biomethane. This is an interesting option especially considering the upcoming expiry of incentives for existing biogas plants, which cannot be converted to biomethane production.
THE CAPACITY OF THE PLANT
The plant in which the technology was developed is located in the Giove locality of Città di Castello (PG). The facility can produce up to 4,500 tonnes of biomethanol per year. This energy source can be used as an 'advanced fuel for the decarbonisation of agricultural and industrial transport, as well as a biochemical carbon negative (-88%) to trap CO2 and in all methanol derivatives such as chipboard, polymers, paints and glues,' Politecnico explained in a note.
PROSPECTS FOR USE
According to researchers, BIGSQUID technology could make a major contribution to the green transition. "If applied to a third of Italian plants (around 600), up to 3 million tonnes/year of biomethanol could be produced. 1 million tonnes/year would cover the current national demand and could be put on the market to replace imported fossil methanol, for a total decarbonisation of one of the main industrial sectors. A surplus of 2 million tonnes/year could be exported or used as a substitute additive in petrol to make it more environmentally friendly,' they say.
The path towards the regeneration of the area Bovisa-Goccia which provides for one of the largest urban-building and infrastructural, redevelopment and environmental restoration projects, takes another important step forward. In fact, the City Council approved the resolution that provides for the signing of an agreement with Politecnico di Milano so that the latter will become the sole implementer of the municipal works that will be carried out in this area.
THE NEW CAMPUS AND THE BOSCO DELLA GOCCIA
Altro passaggio importante previsto dalla convenzione, l’accettazione del progetto che sarà realizzato dallo studio Renzo Piano Building Workshop srl, finanziato integralmente dalla Ion Foundation e dalla stessa donato al Comune e al Politecnico di Milano. Nel dettaglio, il progetto prevede il nuovo Campus universitario sulle aree di proprietà del Politecnico e, per la parte di interesse del Comune, i due edifici di circa 5mila metri quadri ciascuno da destinare alle Civiche Scuole di Milano e la riqualificazione e recupero dell’area denominata ‘Bosco della Goccia’. Il progetto comprenderà anche la riqualificazione delle aree esterne di pertinenza degli edifici e il progetto di riordino del sistema di accesso all’area.
“Nei prossimi anni – dichiara l’assessore alla Rigenerazione urbana Giancarlo Tancredi – Milano potrà vantare un intervento straordinario sotto il profilo urbanistico, ambientale e infrastrutturale. Un fiore all’occhiello che sarà possibile realizzare grazie al progetto di Renzo Piano e alla donazione della Fondazione ION alla città. Oggi la Giunta comunale segna un altro decisivo passo avanti: la convenzione con il Politecnico di Milano consentirà infatti di garantire il coordinamento di tutti gli attori coinvolti, pubblici e privati, e di eseguire gli atti e i provvedimenti relativi alle opere in tempi certi. Il Comune di Milano sarà regista di questa grande operazione che considera strategica per il futuro della città”.
Le opere saranno finanziate dai fondi del ‘Decreto aiuti 2022’: 15 milioni di euro per l’intervento della Foresta Urbana e 36 milioni e 980mila euro per i due edifici destinati ad ospitare la Fondazione Scuole Civiche Milano.
WHAT THE AREA WILL LOOK LIKE
Il Politecnico di Milano realizzerà, come detto, un nuovo campus nella zona dei gasometri grazie alla donazione della Fondazione Ion e al progetto dello studio Rpbw con Renzo Piano. Il campus sarà composto da venti edifici di 4 piani, per un totale di 105.000 mq, che ospiteranno aule, laboratori, residenze, startup e scuole civiche. Il campus sarà collegato alla città e alla regione da un asse ciclo pedonale e da due stazioni ferroviarie rinnovate. Il progetto rispetterà la storia e la natura del luogo, puntando all’indipendenza energetica e all’azzeramento delle emissioni di Co2. Il campus sarà un luogo aperto, innovativo e sostenibile, dedicato al sapere e alla conoscenza.
Offshore wind farms, on which great expectations are placed for decarbonising electricity production, ensure environmental benefits throughout their life cycle. This emerges from a study published in the international journal Sustainable Production and Consumption in which researchers from Politecnico di Milano analysed the potential environmental impacts of a floating offshore wind farm undergoing authorisation off the coast of Sicily.
The analysis included the phases of procurement of materials, transport of components, assembly and installation with specialised vessels, maintenance during operation, disassembly and end-of-life.
Overall, the results of the analysis provide a rough indication, which is useful for becoming aware of the environmental loads of a renewable electricity generation system and comparing it with other energy sources.
Results show that comparing 1 GWh of energy taken from the national grid with 1 Gwh of energy produced by the wind farm, the overall impacts of wind power are significantly reduced for almost all impact categories analysed: in the ‘climate change’ category, the benefit is a 92% reduction in impacts, and worsening is only observed in the ‘abiotic depletion’ category (+95%). Furthermore, this technology would allow to avoid generating energy from fossil fuels, and therefore, as the results show, related investments would be quickly repaid in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy, in 2 and 3 years, respectively.
Scientific literature is still insufficient when it comes to life cycle analysis (LCA) of offshore wind farms with large turbines (over 15 MW) installed on floating structures reflecting recent industry developments and current market trends. However, in order to assess their true environmental sustainability, it is important to analyse renewable electricity generation technologies from a life-cycle perspective.
Authors of this study are, Mario Grosso, professor in Solid Waste Management and Treatment; Lucia Rigamonti, professor in Methodologies for Life Cycle Thinking; and Gaia Brussa, researcher at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
The QUID (Quantum Italy Deployment) project is the Italian implementation of the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI), promoted by the European Commission with the aim of creating a European infrastructure for quantum communication.
In the course of the project, existing communication infrastructures, whether fibre-optic or airborne, will be integrated and equipped with quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, which will cover a large part of the national territory; at the same time, QUID promotes the development of Italian companies that produce systems and services for quantum communication to different categories of users.
The main purpose of QUID is the development of nodes in quantum metropolitan area networks (QMANs), interconnected through the Italian Quantum Backbone, an infrastructure that covers the Italian territory and distributes, with unprecedented stability and accuracy, time and sampling frequency signals using commercial optical fibres. In each QMAN, quantum key exchanges will take place between nodes using discrete variable QKD systems; distances greater than metropolitan will be covered using 'trusted' nodes or innovative Twin-Field QKD techniques (with 'untrusted' nodes).
QUID will also unite important sites for the connection between fibre-optic communication and the space segment of the European QCI.
Alongside these infrastructural activities, QUID places great emphasis on the development of methods for the optimal delivery of quantum communication services.
Finally, QUID leaves room for the development of innovative QKD techniques, for increasing the transmission frequency, for the use of new types of optical fibres and for free-space transmission.
The QUID consortium brings together leading Italian companies in the sector, leading research institutes involved in quantum communication, for both the terrestrial and space segment, and universities engaged in innovation and education.
The involvement of companies that produce QKD devices, operate telecommunications networks and terrestrial and space services, and that offer integrated IT security solutions, will enable the easy connection of QKD systems in communication networks across the country.
Il consorzio, guidato dall’Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM), è composto, oltre che dal Politecnico di Milano, da: Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Coherentia, Thales Alenia Space – Italia, QTI, Leonardo, ThinkQuantum, Tim SpA, Telsy, Telespazio, Consorzio TOP-IX, Università degli studi dell’Aquila, Università La Sapienza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Università degli Studi di Padova, Università degli Studi di Trieste.
Engineers, architects and designers: these are most of the professionals that the Politecnico produces, but sometimes working life is unpredictable and takes you to unexpected places, whether it is the stage of Sanremo or becoming one of the most famous contemporary street artists. What is certain is that all of these artists, in one way or another, have brought with them the Politecnico 'know-how' that we are all familiar with.
So here are five alumni musicians and artists that you probably know, but may not have realised once sat at the Poli's desks. Do you know of any others? Let us know, and we’ll write part two!
STEFANO BELISARI, AKA 'ELIO' - Alumnus of Electronic Engineering (2002)
Stefano Belisari, better known as Elio e le Storie Tese, Elio e le Storie Tese, graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and from the Politecnico di Milano in 2003 with a degree in Electronic Engineering.
We spoke to him for our book “2099”, in which, among other things, he had a message for young people about their future and career choices:
“Try to know your strengths and let them guide you. Take a few years to think about how you can make the most of your talents, make a plan and, above all, be impartial: another false myth today is 'do what you like'. I would advise you to do what you are good at”.
Still on the subject of music, Edoardo Bennato also graduated from our University, but in architecture: during his time in Milan he completed his degree and, in the meantime, managed to connect with the world of Milanese discography. A guitarist, harmonica player and singer, he is considered one of the greatest exponents of rock music. On 19 July 1980, he became the first Italian artist to sell out the San Siro stadium in Milan in front of more than 50,000 fans.
Luca Mangoni is also a musician in the band Elio e le storie tese (although he is not officially a member, he has often appeared in the band's live performances and video clips) and an Alumnus of architecture. Among his many works as an architect, perhaps the best known is the Mangoni Tower, a residential building on Via Nervesa in Milan, built between 1995 and 2000.
SALVATORE BENINTENDE, AKA TV BOY | Alumnus of Industrial Design (2004)
A street artist, he is associated with the NeoPop movement[1]. He is best known for the character he created, 'TVboy', an alter ego that the artist often depicts as a symbol of distinction from the new generation's massified culture, driven largely by television. Born Salvatore Benintende, he graduated in 2004 with a degree in Industrial Design from the newly opened Bovisa Campus.
His first exhibition was at the Faculty of Design, where he built a display of old, abandoned televisions, using stencils to paint the faces of VIPs and friends on the unlit screens. It was this exhibition that brought him his first success and the baptism of his stage name.
GUIDO BISAGNI, AKA 108 - Alumnus of Industrial Design 2006
A leading exponent of the Italian urban art scene, Guido Bisagni holds a degree in Industrial Design from the Politecnico di Milano and is considered one of the first and foremost exponents of abstract post-graffiti art at national and European level. He paints mainly in abandoned industrial areas: he was one of the first to bring non-figurative painting into public space, with the intention of creating 'visual chaos'.
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