the university is a place where knowledge is sought, as an engine of positive progress. The PhD. is the last step in the path of preparing young people for research, and Politecnico di Milano has been investing heavily in this for years, with its Doctoral School (www.polimi.it/phd).
Perhaps not all of you know that we are experiencing a period of strong promotion of the doctoral program here in Italy: in fact, the government has decided to invest part of the PNRR funds to finance 22,700 new doctoral scholarships in the period 2022-24. This is a great opportunity for growth in the national context, considering that there are currently a total of about 30,000 doctoral students in Italian universities.
This initiative can also be an additional opportunity for collaboration between our University and its Alumni. There are many forms of collaboration that can be pursued together:
enrollment in competitions for admission to doctoral programs is open to all: if you are interested, apply, and if you know someone who is interested, advise them to apply (especially if you are a key player in the academic world, you can share the PhD opportunity at Politecnico di Milano with your students and your network of acquaintances);
co-funding of doctoral fellowships to develop research in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano is encouraged, with the candidate staying at the company for at least 6 months;
initiatives to host doctoral students in Public Administration institutions to carry out research activities in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano are also incentivized.
Let us therefore seize this unique opportunity, of great investment of resources, to build new collaborative initiatives and renew existing ones.
Anyone who would like to learn more about the topic or have more details about the initiative can write to internationalphd@polimi.it.
Politecnico di Milano ranks 2nd in Italy and 91st among world universities in the overall THE Impact Ranking 2023, improving its global position by seven places from 2022. The ranking, active since 2019, measures the contribution of universities to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and involves a total of 1591 universities worldwide.
Politecnico di Milano's best ranking is in SDG 9 Enterprises, Innovation and Infrastructures, in which the university ranks 16th globally (18th last year) thanks to the university's network of laboratories, consisting of 6 major infrastructures used both for research and by businesses, 245 research laboratories and 34 interdepartmental laboratories, plus 28 spin-offs and 2925 individual patents.
In addition, the Politecnico achieved prominent placements in SDG 8 Lavoro Dignitoso e Crescita Economica (Decent Work and Economic Growth), placing 37th (up from 59th last year), and SDG 10 Riduzione delle disuguaglianze (Reducing Inequalities), placing 28th (up from 45th in 2022). The university also conducts strategic programs such as POP Pari Opportunità Politecniche (Equal Politecnico Opportunities), which aims to ensure a study and work environment that respects gender identity, disability, culture and background, and SCHOLARSHIPS@POLIMI, several scholarship programs to ensure equal rights to education for all and promote the enrollment of underrepresented groups.
“Our commitment to promoting the culture of sustainable development in all institutional activities, teaching and research is total and the first results prove it. It is a journey that has just begun but involves all the energies of the Politecnico's community on at least four fronts: environmental sustainability, promotion of responsible research, international cooperation and equal opportunities.“.
THE Impact Ranking 2023 requires each university to choose for itself at least four sustainable development goals on which it wants to compete. The ranking assesses the impact of research and teaching related to the SDGs, the responsible management of the university's resources by staff, faculty and students, and the active involvement of national stakeholders, using quantitative indicators such as citations and publications but also information on the university's active programs.
Politecnico di Milano has as an integral part of its university mission collaboration with society to help it achieve the Sustainable Development Goals at global, national and local levels, demonstrating the importance of the university community context and in the international academic arena.
The five research projects on the theme of 'Equality and Recovery', selected by the Polisocial Award 2021 and funded by 5 per mille donations to the Politecnico, are coming to an end. The public health emergency caused by the pandemic intensified imbalances and marginalisation and led to the concrete risk of an increase in social inequality; the projects funded acted according to a logic of economic, social and cultural recovery, promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies to reduce inequalities and facilitate access to resources and opportunities for particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.
The Co-WIN project has developed two pilot experiments to recover and enhance properties confiscated from criminal organisations. Andrea Campioli, Dean of the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and scientific co-ordinator of the project, tells us all about it: "We have been restoring properties confiscated from the mafia, to return them to society in a reconstructed state. As part of this process, we set up worksite-school experiences, getting both a quota of vulnerable individuals (for example, immigrants or unemployed people), to whom we offered a vocational retraining course before starting work, and a quota of university students, guaranteeing them “on-the-job” experience, involved in work at the construction site".
HOW REAL ESTATE CONFISCATION WORKS
The legal procedure is as follows: following a judicial process, real estate is confiscated (the whole process usually takes eight years) and an agency (Agenzia Nazionale per i Beni Sequestrati e Confiscati - ANBSC) allocates it to various municipalities. Municipalities in Lombardy (the area on which the research focused) can apply for regional funding for the redevelopment of real estate received in ownership: “Regione Lombardia will bear 50% of the renovation costs, within a pre-established budget and subject to a plan being presented", Campioli explains. Properties confiscated from the mafia are generally small-scale: garages, parking, flats and semi-detached and detached houses. In Lombardy alone there are more than 3,200 such properties, 1,242 of which have been allocated to municipalities for redevelopment.
This is where Co-WIN comes in, proposing the development of a 'win-win' collaborative relationship between the different parties involved: the public administration, trainees, training providers, construction companies and the community. "In our two ongoing pilot projects, a row of terraced houses in Gerenzago (Pavia) and a farmhouse in Cisliano (Milan), students from Politecnico di Milano were involved as trainees, responsible for following the required procedure for the redevelopment of the assets, directly within the municipal offices, and learning the profession onsite, working alongside the works supervisor". Once redeveloped, the assets are returned to the community: "They are generally sold to third sector entities with a social vocation, such as associations and NGOs, or are granted for use by families in need", Campioli explains.
VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR VULNERABLE INDIVIDUALS
Un importante aspetto sociale del progetto è quello del coinvolgimento di soggetti fragili nei lavori in cantiere: “La nostra idea è dare loro la possibilità di qualificarsi professionalmente per poi entrare nel mercato del lavoro”, ci dice Campioli. “Abbiamo stipulato una convenzione con ESEM-Cpt (Ente Scuola Edile Milanese) per garantire a queste persone di seguire a titolo gratuito corsi di formazione abilitanti e professionalizzati al lavoro nei cantieri edili”. Ma trovare soggetti disponibili non è stato così semplice come previsto: “In questa fase abbiamo coinvolto il Coordinamento Nazionale Comunità di Accoglienza (CNCA), un’associazione che si occupa della accoglienza e dell’inserimento lavorativo di soggetti fragili, e l’ENAIP (enti di formazione professionale),ma forse abbiamo sbagliato la modalità di veicolazione delle proposte di tirocinio: ad esempio abbiamo proposto sei mesi di tirocinio, ma molti immigrati hanno la possibilità di vivere nei centri di accoglienza per soli tre mesi prima di trovarsi a dover essere economicamente indipendenti, per cui non possono permettersi di partecipare a programmi di formazione così lunghi e per esigenza si rivolgono al mercato del lavoro in nero. Ora abbiamo riformulato i termini del percorso di tirocinio extra-curriculare in modo diverso e abbiamo ricevuto diverse candidature”.
A MODEL TO ADMIRE AND REPLICATE
The project is in its final stretch: the research team has been granted a four-month extension on the official deadline (set for 15 June), so that they can continue the work at the two pilot worksites. By October, everything should be completed.
The aim of the Co-WIN project is to produce a model that can then be replicated throughout Italy, so that further worksite-school experiences can be set up systematically: "We want this to go on regardless of whether Politecnico is there: we are trying to get the documentation Regione Lombardia needs, so that our project is not just a one-off".
One of the partners involved in this is an industrial entity which has donated building materials to the companies doing the work: for the businesses, it offers an image payback in terms of social sustainability. 'The plan for the future is to also set up a register of businesses willing to give up materials for free'. The project will be presented on 21 and 22 April in Naples, as part of the Second Exhibition Forum on Confiscated Assets.
DONATE YOUR "5 X 1000" TO THE POLITECNICO DI MILANO AND SUPPORT RESEARCH: FIND OUT HOW AT THIS LINK https://www.dona.polimi.it/il-5-x-mille/
The second meeting of the SafeCREW project (https://safecrew.org/), funded by the European Union (EU) within the Horizon Europe program, has just taken place at Politecnico di Milano. SafeCREW aims to support the novel EU Drinking Water Directive (DWD) by generating advanced knowledge and developing tools and guidelines for disinfected and non-disinfected drinking water supply systems.
Provision of safe drinking water in sufficient quantity is essential for human health and concerns 4 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as defined by United Nations. Both surface water and groundwater are essential resources for drinking water supply throughout the European Union. While water quantity, threatened by increasingly frequent periods of drought, receives much attention, the threats of climate change impacts on water quality for drinking water supply, on the treatment processes necessary for its purification and on the maintenance of drinking water quality along the distribution network are currently inadequately considered.
Despite the long-term experience with the reliable operation of drinking water supply systems (DWSS), the climate change impacts on water quality require to face a number of new challenges: the (future) need for disinfection, the microbial stability in the distribution network, and the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs), with potential adverse effects on human health.
Utilities need to address short-term demands for improved risk management arising from the current DWD, as well the long-term challenges of climate change impacts on water quality, minimizing the risks for final consumers.
Currently, DWSS are very diversified by source of supply, purification processes, characteristics of the distribution networks, so that they must address different concerns to supply drinking water safe for human health. SafeCREW faces these critical issues, focusing on disinfection, its consequences, and the minimization of disinfectant dosages and DBPs formation, and moreover it addresses the potential need for disinfection in currently non-disinfected DWSS.
Four case studies in three European countries were chosen as representative (Hamburg, Berlin, Milano, Tarragona) to develop novel technological and modelling tools for drinking water treatment and distribution management, with a multidisciplinary approach, which allows to act on the entire DWSS, from the supply source, via purification treatments, up to the final distribution.
More in detail, chemical and microbiological water quality characterization methods will be improved, novel data sets on the occurrence and concentration of so far unknown DBPs will be created, evaluation protocols for materials in contact with water will be identified, innovative and sustainable treatment solutions will be developed to actively respond to the identified threats, the management of distribution networks will be optimized, which can no longer be seen only as passive infrastructures for water distribution, and finally risk assessment procedures will be defined that integrate the effects of mixtures of chemical and microbiological contaminants.
SafeCREW will provide transferable tools to end-users (water utilities, national/EU regulators, researchers, enterprises), including:
reliable methods to evaluate microbial stability, characterize natural organic matter (NOM), detect DBPs and account for their human health toxicity;
experimental protocols to select proper materials in contact with disinfected and non-disinfected water;
monitoring and modelling tools, also exploiting machine learning, for real-time optimization of DWSS management;
an integrated risk assessment framework to guide future interventions which ensure that both disinfected and non-disinfected DWSS can continue providing safe drinking water in the face of climate change.
SafeCREW will increase the preparedness of the EU water sector for challenges arising from climate change and will support the EU’s leading position in science-based policy making for drinking water consumer protection.
Water) Research Center (Leader) and Tutech Innovation GmbH, both at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) (Germany), Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Berlin (KWB) (Germany), BioDetection Systems b.v. (BDS) (The Netherlands), EURECAT Technologic de Catalunya (Spain), Umweltbundesamt (UBA) (Germany), Consorci d’Aigües de Tarragona (CAT) (Spain), Metropolitana Milanese SpA (Italy), Umweltforschungszentrum Leipzig (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, Germany) and Multisensor Systems Ltd. (MSS, United Kingdom).
Politecnico di Milano brings in SafeCREW multidisciplinary skills thanks to the collaboration of researchers from four Departments: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DICA, prof. Manuela Antonelli), Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “G. Natta” (DCMC, prof. Carlo Punta), Department of Mathematics (DMAT, prof. Ilenia Epifani) and Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB, prof. Francesco Trovò).
“Since antiquity, the tropics have been widely recognized as a symbol of exotic beauty, dangerous animals, and luxuriant vegetation. Portrayed as a faraway place, with different histories, languages, and cultures, this geographical area represents an amalgamation of qualities that define the fantastic and mysterious nature of reality. Often considered from a western perspective to be a hostile environment to progress, the tropics represent everything that Europe and the United States are not (Lasso, 2019), the antithesis of civilized modernity. The exhibition of the Panamanian Pavilion should provide a counternarrative to this status quo, with Panama as a case study for a future vision of a ‘tropical’ nation, by recovering and connecting its various historical influences.”
- Aimée Lam Tunon, Exhibition curator
ROOM 1: SEPARATION FOR CONTROL
For over 500 years, the isthmus of Panama, a narrow strip of land better known as ‘the land bridge between two oceans’ proved itself as a region of geopolitical importance in global transportation. Since the earliest European colonists, Panamanian history has been shaped by the recurrent theme of commerce. As Spanish influence and colonial control over the region began to disappear in the early nineteenth century, other countries started pursuing their economic interests through the construction of a canal connecting the two oceans. A first attempt was led by the French: With a death toll estimated at over 22,000 lives, mainly caused by malaria and yellow fever, Panama was immortalized as a place of danger and disease. After the failure of the French, the United States entered the new nation of Panama with a distinctive vision of imperial administration – the Panama Canal Zone.
Less a colony than an engineering enclave, a ten-mile strip of land meant to stand in contrast to its natural and social environment, defining a landscape of modernity. Within these confines, an ‘othering’ narrative and ideology led to a demarcation of sanitated areas, domestication of the jungle, racial segregation, and depopulation of the ‘zone’ from Panamanians and their cities. This ‘buffer zone’ of protection between the colonizer and the colonized is an architectural structure, able to activate wider discourses of equality, empowerment, and identity in a constantly changing environment. It creates a liminal space wherein the relationship with the land – one that is threatened because the community is alienated – becomes fundamental, stops being merely decorative, and emerges as a full character (Glissant,1989).
The first room will shift the visitors' attention toward the impacts of these controlling and dividing interventions (zones) defining the former Panama Canal Zone. Insects and mosquitoes of Venice are invited into the space through blue insect lights. Dancing shadows of these insects on the walls connect the colonizer’s perspective with Plato’s allegory of the cave: Modern assumptions about the ‘tropics’ are exposed as mere illusions observed from a distance.
COURTYARD: THE MAGICAL WALKWAY BENEATH THE SURFACE
Memories have an influence on self-identification and provide continuity between the past, present, and future. They turn into allusions, echoes, and reminiscences that create multiple connotations, defining the complexity of the architectural organism. Given the power of modernism in erasing histories and indigenous languages, local Panamanian communities were lost in the process of the Canal construction, resulting in the domination of a singular ideology of human progress, order, and control.
The destruction of small towns, historical areas, rural settlements, and Panamanian landscapes, evoked feelings of nostalgia for the environment that was and the desire to preserve its image in the collective memory, which is reflected in the recurring theme of the landscape in Panamanian literature. “Caribbean writers have always had only one referent available to shape the theme and the language of their works: the landscape – insular, oceanic, luxurious, mysterious, and ever-resistant to conquest and appropriation by mapping or “realistic” descriptions. (...) This is one of the basic precepts of the magical realist text. Only the magic and the dream are true because they are the only discursive elements able to present the unpresentable, to speak the unspeakable where the realistic text fails.” (Arva, 2010) Following this line of thought, the courtyard will provide a safe space for reflection, avoiding direct confrontation with colonial trauma, while subverting the western perception of the ‘tropics’ as a ‘magical’ land. Trees recovered from beneath the waters of the artificial lakes of Panama will enable the visitors to indirectly confront the traumatic history of erased communities through the canal construction (Lasso, 2019).
ROOM 2: SEPARATION FOR PROTECTION
Barro Colorado Island (BCI) is a unique space, a hilltop that became isolated in the middle of the Panama Canal when the waters of the Chagres River were dammed to create Gatun Lake, the main passage of the waterway. Set aside by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute as a nature reserve since 1923, today, exactly 100 years later, this island is the most studied tropical forest in the world. Frequently advertised as a living scientific ‘archive’ and ‘laboratory’ in which the landscape became both – an object and repository of scientific knowledge. Discussing the purportedly opposing perspectives toward BCI as ‘a fragment of authentic tropical nature standing at the crossroads of the world’ and its position as ‘a shadow of the former Canal Zone’, this last room of the exhibition will question the history, inclusivity, and legacy of this tropical station.
Discussing the supposedly opposing perspectives towards BCI as "a fragment of authentic tropical nature standing at the crossroads of the world" and its position as a "shadow of the former Canal Zone," this final room of the exhibition will question the history, inclusiveness, and legacy of this tropical station.
What is its role in the conservation of local and global biodiversity and ecological research? The room will be a space of listening, to critically reflect on the connections between control and protection and to imagine a future vision for science and modernity in Panama and beyond.
The initiative covered different areas of specialization, such as aerospace, mechanical or materials engineering. Five girls and 29 boys, all young graduates who were already Pirelli employees, were offered the opportunity to enrich their education at the start of their career path in Pirelli's Research & Development team.
The ceremony was attended by Donatella Sciuto, Rector of the Politecnico di Milano, with Andrea Casaluci, General Manager Operations at Pirelli, Piero Misani, Executive Vice President Research and Development and Cyber at Pirelli, and Davide Sala, Chief HR and Organization Officer at Pirelli.
Credits: La Repubblica
"Training and research are prerequisites for an industrial development that looks up to the future", said Edoardo Sabbioni, Lecturer at Politecnico di Milano and Scientific Director of the Master's program. "This Master's degree fully captures these aspects by promoting transversal training and a systemic vision capable of combining the elements of tire design, production and testing through knowledge of vehicle dynamics to support their virtualization and that of materials and processes to ensure increasingly sustainable development. During the Master's program, I saw a great growth of the students that reached its best expression with the project works, through which they synthesized the skills acquired from the different learning areas and applied them critically and creatively to real-life situations, combining the backgrounds of the different members of the working groups".
Piero Misani, Executive Vice President of Research and Development and Cyber at Pirelli, said: "The complexity of the tire today is so high that it requires the highest level of specialization and the shortest possible time for experimentation. Only with always new and up-to-date digital skills can we compete in the market as protagonists. And this master's program has allowed us to deliver indispensable know-how to these 34 girls and boys who are already paying back the company by achieving important results".
The project, which is part of the long-standing collaboration between Pirelli and Politecnico di Milano aimed at generating cutting-edge technologies, focused on product expertise in the automotive sector, particularly the design and production of tires of the future and knowledge of vehicle dynamics. These are all indispensable elements for the increasingly widespread use of virtualization, which is now necessary for the development of the most innovative tires and for fruitful collaboration with automakers.
The Master's course, which saw students engaged in didactics and laboratories, was developed on 5 disciplinary modules on different thematic areas: from in-depth knowledge of the tire (forces, performance, design, testing, etc...) to "smart tire" technologies, from the study of materials to production processes, but also from an in-depth study of environmental issues to machine learning techniques or data analysis. The lectures, which were partly held inside the Learning Hub of Pirelli's new Cinturato Building in Bicocca dedicated to the group's training activities and at the R&D laboratories, then ended with a company project work elaborated in small groups of students with their tutor and a dedicated team with the aim of finding and highlighting the main connections between innovative, strategic and growth topics for the company.
The "R&D EXCELLENCE NEXT" master's degree is one example of the link between Pirelli and the university world and reinforces its open innovation model, which today sees the company working on some 65 projects with 18 universities. Collaborations with academia complement and complement Pirelli's R&D, with its 13 in-house research centers employing more than 2,000 people worldwide.
The five research projects on the theme of 'Equality and Recovery', selected by the Polisocial Award 2021 and financed thanks to '5 per mille' pre-tax donations to Politecnico di Milano, are coming to an end. The public health emergency resulting from the pandemic contributed to intensifying inequality and marginalisation and actualising the risk of an increase in disparity; therefore, the funded projects work towards economic, social and cultural recovery by promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies aimed at reducing inequalities and facilitating access to resources and opportunities for particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.
TRANSLATED FROM BUREAUCRATIC LANGUAGE, THERE IS A GAP IN CHILDCARE SERVICES
The starting point of the Equi06 project is the Italian Legislative Decree no 65/2017, which proposed the creation of an "integrated 0-6 system" combining the two nursery-school segments (what used to be called 'kindergartens'), historically developed separately with different educational approaches, managers and institutional bodies. ‘The level of development of the two segments is also uneven,’ emphasises Stefania Sabatinelli, the project's scientific manager. "In Italy, kindergartens are attended by almost all children between the ages of 3 and 5, as opposed to nurseries addressed to 0-2 year-old children".
The integrated 0-6 system is still a work in progress: at the pedagogical level, some ministerial guidelines have been issued and the NRRP provides funding for the creation of 0-6 poles, ie facilities dedicated to educating children from zero to six years old. Why is it necessary to integrate these two educational segments? "Comparative literature tells us that in countries where services are organised in a single cycle (those in northern Europe) the quality levels of supply are higher and more homogeneous", explains Sabatinelli. "Such single cycle could also favour earlier access by children: at the moment, the costs of enrolment in crèches are often very high, unlike those in kindergartens, and this is a barrier for many families". Early access to high quality services is important because children learn to learn and to be with others in their first years: it is at this stage that the inequalities that lead to children having unequal starting points already at the beginning of compulsory schooling can be countered more effectively.
THE IMPACT OF AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM
The Equi06 project has three main research objectives, ie mapping the existing 0-6 services in Milan, investigating the conditions of a specific territorial context and experimenting the transformation of an existing space to foster 0-6 integration.
"Mapping the existing 0-6 services in Milan has been a useful research action in itself. We could locate them on a map and such operation had never been done before", Sabatinelli emphasises. "Now we also know the relationships between crèches and kindergartens, public and private services, municipal and state services, continuous and supplementary services".
With this information, the researchers identified an area on which to focus their study: "We chose the Comasina district because there we found a high potential demand for 0-6 services, along with several indicators of social fragility", explains Sabatinelli. Narrowing the field of research even further, the team selected a 1.5x1.5-kilometre box in the district, within which there are public, private, municipal and state services, as well as a multi-service municipal day-care centre where the two educational cycles are offered in the same building though operating separately.
The last objective, coordinated by the Department of Design and still in progress, consists in working on the Merloni multi-service building with the coordinator of services in the area, some educators and some parents, in order to ponder on how to improve the spaces inside and outside the building and the routes to get there, as well as to understand how the educational environment can be transformed and improved with minimal interventions.
The pedagogical aspect is not neglected: although it does not fall within the competence of the Politecnico departments being involved, it is supplemented by external partners - Comune di Milano, the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE), Save the Children, Gruppo Nazionale Nidi e Infanzia, Legacoop Lombardia.
The final objective is to define a guidance document on the learning achieved: ‘Our ambition is to draw general lessons, guidelines that can be useful beyond this specific context. It will be interesting to replicate the project in other contexts - and perhaps even on other scales,' Sabatinelli concludes.
The final presentation event of Project 5A - Autonomie per l’Autismo, Attraverso realtà virtuale, realtà Aumentata e Agenti conversazionali (Autonomy for Autism Across virtual reality, Augmented reality and Conversational Agents), took place on Friday 31 March.
At the end of two years of intense and exciting work, it was possible to find out about and test the innovative solutions developed as part of this research project, which was set up to strengthen the autonomy of people with ASDs (Autistic Spectrum Disorders), promote their social inclusion and improve their quality of life.
The 5A project involves the use of interactive applications usable anywhere and anytime via smartphones, tablets and wearable headsets, which integrate Immersive Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Conversational Agents and, by creating a continuum between training in the virtual world and experiences in the real world, help people with ASDs to understand the environmental and socio-organisational characteristics of everyday environments and to correctly perform the related activities. Benefits include not only improved abilities, but also emotional-psychological reinforcement and general well-being.
Credits: www.5a.polimi.it
Research efforts focused on mobility in city spaces: the underground, trains, supermarkets, museums, libraries, hospitals, etc. The 5A Virtual Reality applications allow people to practise using public transport by 'immersing' themselves, using a headset, in a digital environment that simulates spaces and activities typically found when using trains and the underground. The 5A Augmented Reality applications support users while using public transport in the real world by generating, on tablets or smartphones, visual information that is superimposed over the view of the surroundings and helps people understand how to get around and what to do. Both applications involve a Conversational Agent which acts as a virtual companion and proactively converses with the user to guide them during both the simulation of public transport use and the real-world experience.
The 5A applications were co-designed by a multidisciplinary team consisting of engineers and interaction designers from Politecnico di Milano and autism specialists from the two clinical partners – Fondazione Sacra Famiglia and IRCCS E. Medea - Associazione La Nostra Famiglia.
The 5A project was carried out with the contribution of Fondazione TIM (Research call 'Free to communicate. Smart Technologies and Innovation for Autism') and the NRRP project MUSA (Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action/Spoke6 - Innovation for Sustainable and Inclusive Societies).
The Industrial PhD in SEL is a three-year, high-level research course launched by the University and funded with the contribution of EssilorLuxottica that participates in defining the research theme. The PhD is a recent graduate who acts as a driver of change and brings to the organization, after three years of training on a shared research topic, a young point of view and new methods. He or she will work in the research line group and generate results and publications. The doctoral student will then be able to pursue both academic and professional careers.
You can pursue postdoctoral studies at SEL. As researcher, you help SEL professors, researchers and pm in the progress of research lines. To be a senior researcher, you must be supervised by one of our affiliated professors or Project Managers.
As a Politecnico di Milano student in the lab you will be involved in teaching and project work activities related to your curriculum, but concretely connected to lab activities. As a student, you can bring your contribution to Smart Eyewear Lab supervised by one of its affiliated professors.
The five research projects on the theme of 'Equality and Recovery', selected by the Polisocial Award 2021 and funded by 5 per mille donations to the Politecnico, are coming to an end. The public health emergency caused by the pandemic intensified imbalances and marginalisation and led to the concrete risk of an increase in social inequality; the projects funded acted according to a logic of economic, social and cultural recovery, promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies to reduce inequalities and facilitate access to resources and opportunities for particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.
The RESTARTHealth project (short for Renewable Energy Systems To Activate Recovery Through the Health sector) aims to optimise the energy efficiency of Uganda's second largest hospital, St Mary's Lacor Hospital, which is located in Gulu District. "We have been working for some time with Lacor Hospital, whose technical manager for the past few years has been Jacopo Barbieri, an alumnus of the Politecnico di Milano," explains Riccardo Mereu, RESTARTHealth project manager and researcher in the Energy department. With more than 600 workers, many of whom live in the hospital complex, energy efficiency at Lacor is not only a question of medical equipment: "The hospital complex includes guesthouses, canteens and employee accommodation," explains Mereu. It is like a small town of two thousand people (the families of employees also live 'on campus', in addition, of course, to the patients); so, we also have to think about the energy used for cooking (at the moment, almost always wood fires), for washing with hot water, for lighting the houses and for transport.
AN IMPROVABLE HYBRID ELECTRIC SYSTEM
Currently, the complex is already equipped with a good number of photovoltaic panels, which produce hundreds of kilowatt-hours of energy. "Photovoltaic panels are undoubtedly the most suitable energy source for the location," says Mereu. "The resources in the area certainly do not allow us to consider hydropower or wind power, while we have looked into the possibility of producing biogas from hospital waste. We have to work out if there is sufficient waste to produce enough biogas”.
One of the main limitations is the fact that the energy produced by photovoltaic panels cannot be fed into the national grid: "There is a lack of bi-directional exchange, which means that a lot of energy is lost and efficiency is impacted," explains Mereu. "The system already is, and has to be, hybrid: there are currently photovoltaic panels, the electricity grid and some diesel generators for when the power goes out completely. The idea is that, in future, these three sources will be exploited in an optimised way compared to now, with reduced energy losses and improved management of power peaks, which could put pressure on the hospital's internal network". The exchange between renewable electricity grids and conventional grids is a very topical issue on our continent too, which is looking for a way for them to be fully integrated in terms of both infrastructure and administration.
THE CREATION OF GUIDELINES
The long-term goal, in addition to the energy efficiency of the hospital, is to create guidelines that can be useful in other contexts. St Mary's Lacor hospital is a special case, because it is not state-run but private, and is run by an Italian foundation: however, the researchers also looked at other case studies, such as some state hospitals and those run by private entities such as Emergency, to get a more comprehensive overview of the situation.
In addition to the main hospital site, tests were also conducted in three other outpatient clinics located in rural areas 30-40 miles away. "The project ends at the end of May 2023: we are currently analysing the data collected, from which we will derive the information necessary to draw up specific and general energy guidelines. We will evaluate the potential impact of certain energy improvements in the hospital complex, such as the possibility of a bi-directional exchange between the national grid and photovoltaic panels, the installation of electric stoves, the introduction of additional solar panels for water heating, and the possibility of electrifying the internal transport of medical waste. For the time being, we are stopping at the feasibility study: implementation will depend on the hospital obtaining private funding and donations, or winning public or private calls,” Mereu concludes.
Night Watchman, Doorman, Travel Agency, Telephone. These are some of the handwritten notes, in the rounded letters of a comic book, found not in a speech bubble but in the geometric lines of the floor plan of a building in Via Laghetto in Milan. A page in the same series reads: "Architectural Composition Course 2, 1956-1957, Guido Crepas, Degree Theme".
The characters and directions included in the plan show us that the 24-year-old Guido Crepax was already thinking about who exactly would live between those precise lines: it is a preview of his nature as an author, the nature of someone who wants above all to be the architect of stories. "About five years ago we found these plans in the loft of our mother's house," says Caterina, the daughter of the great illustrator and Politecnico Alumnus, "and it is always a thrill when we find something that shows us a new aspect of our father”.
Giacomo, who curates and promotes the Crepax archive along with Caterina and their other brother Antonio, gives a summary of his father’s life after graduation: "After finishing his studies at the Politecnico, as well as already working as an illustrator in the advertising and record industry, our father started working for architects, creating illustrations for them, which is now done by computers. We could say that he was the 'render-hand'”. In recent years, Crepax, the illustrator and the man, has reappeared at the Politecnico in a series of exhibitions, the latest of which is entitled "Guido Crepax, Architetto del Fumetto" (Guido Crepax, Architect of Comic Strips) and is a recognition of the works of an entire career, searching for the hand of the architect in contrast to that of the illustrator. "Celebrating him in the place where he studied is very valuable," explains Giacomo, "because it was here that he began to experiment, and here that he learnt many of the historical fundamentals of architecture and design which entered directly into his work. We therefore think the period of his education has to be retold. And besides, my sister and I are also Alumni, both architecture graduates”.
Switching thus into his professional role, he comments on another of his father’s drawings, which shows the view of the building: "The starting point was a kind of shopping centre that later developed into a residential tower. The design is interesting: it features curved side elements, very soft, that seem to evoke the architecture of Sant'Elia. I would describe it as a project that fully captures the futurist idea of the 1950s, made up of transparencies that also emphasise the structural part of the building: the voids, typical of the rationalist architecture of that period, the modern parts visible through the glass windows and the solid structure of the reinforced concrete pillars”. Elements of the comics to come can also be seen in this drawing: an American car, the clothes being worn, the Hotel Sforza sign and the glimpse of the Duomo in the background, squeezed in between two other buildings.
La laurea conseguita al Politecnico di Milano
His academic background emerges here and there: in a drawing of Valentina strolling in the Missori area, behind her is Torre Velasca, built by Crepax’s thesis advisor, the Alumnus Ernesto Nathan Rogers. A frame of a man at a drafting machine brings us another scrap of biography, “His grandfather was an engineer. In fact, before enrolling in architecture, our father had taken a year of engineering, but was very unhappy with it,” Caterina reveals. "However, his whole life he made his drawings at his grandfather's actual desk, which is now in the architecture studio where I work," says Giacomo. In this stream of memories and references, Caterina says: "In the library at home we always found books on architecture, which we then used in turn. For him, design books were the best source of inspiration, because he was interested in drawing interiors and people in their environments, to also tell stories through design objects, wallpapers and lamps. Many of them were design pieces from our house, which we used to find in the comics”. The Arco lamp, the Le Corbusier sofas, the Brionvega television and the Magistretti bed were references that are mixed with more personal inspirations, as Caterina recounts: "There was an armchair with a footstool on which our mother used to read, opposite the table on which our father used to draw, and so that prompted a dialogue between reality and paper". Showing a drawing with the city of Prague, Giacomo explains: “Since he hardly ever left his studio, he would ask for photos of our trips abroad, which then became the locations of Valentina's adventures”.
La scrivania originale di Guido Crepax
Two other drawings help us to place him: portraits of Gropius and of Frank Lloyd Wright, the latter pictured next to Fallingwater. The tools of his trade were those of the architect's trade: ink, sheets of tracing paper and the razor blades with which he would scratch them, a compass and technical pens. "He used to lay out the very edges of the frames in straight lines with the corners flat,” observes Giacomo. “His drawings are almost like sections, floor plans where things happen in the individual frames. For example, there is a drawing with a bed at the centre, with Valentina and her companion on it, and from underneath come other side views of the bed. Or the choice to insert a drawing of a spiral staircase by fitting it into a long, narrow panel tells us about the architectural care he took in composing an image. On one sheet of paper there is a proper orthogonal projection of Valentina, which in this way becomes a device for moving, by turning it around, onto the next panel and the next episode.
He had an eye for detail, as Caterina explains well: "His stories take place mostly indoors and rarely outdoors, but when we are outside he always shows us places in fragments. There is no panorama of Milan cathedral, just the framing of a spire. He loved doors with handles, because they always had mystery behind them. He had invented underground people, who lived underground and emerged through gaps in the wallpaper and cracks in the wall or from the furniture, figures hidden in the floral patterns of a wallpaper”. What kind of architect would he have been? "His architecture would probably have been very rigorous but at the same time very imaginative, because he was very precise in his documentation but within his work he threw in things that were more of the future than of the present. Let’s say, maybe it would have been similar to the works of Oscar Niemeyer, like Brasilia,” Giacomo replies. Caterina adds: "He was always a member of the architects' association and he had signed the project for a house of his mother's in a small village in Versilia. But he had made a mistake in the design and put the main façade at the back and vice versa, he had reversed them”.
What lesson did he teach you?
«To perceive the whole, to get wrapped up in a reality that is composed of many things: architecture, politics and design, just like his stories. To bring this out, when we set up exhibitions we always try to physically bring the visitor into his world, almost as if they are entering the drawings, because he had no limits. Perhaps that is the greatest lesson: life is about sensing everything».
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