The students from Skyward Experimental Rocketry – the Politecnico di Milano association created with the aim of delivering and building sounding rockets – took home a historic victory: in October 2022, they triumphed in the international “European Rocketry Challenge – EuRoC 2022”, the most important European university rocket launch competition, organized by the Portuguese Space Agency.
The team from the Politecnico had already finished second last year with the Lynx, but this year the Pyxis carried them to the top of the podium, winning two technical awards.
The technology used allowed – as stated by the jury's motivation – enabled the team to excel "across the board in all aspects of the competition, honouring an exceptional and well-balanced overall effort without diminishing any of the aspects of the competition, whether it be technical documentation, project implementation, teamwork, or flight performance, thus demonstrating a truly remarkable effort and result.”
Lamberto Duò, Rector's Delegate for Teaching and Orientation and reference person for international competitions, states:
“International competitions are challenges that allow students to apply the knowledge acquired during their academic career directly in the field. They are a unique opportunity to develop the ability to design in a group, to practice problem solving and to interact with colleagues from other departments but also from other universities. I am delighted that all the passion shown in recent years has allowed Skyward students to achieve this very important result at international level.”
We will talk about Skyward in the next issue of MAP, the Politecnico di Milano Alumni Magazine. Become a member to receive it.
In the 2020-2022 three-year period, the Politecnico has received received more than 10 million euros in donations from individuals and companies. “We’ve hit the target which we set at the beginning of the three years, as community of donors”, commented professor Enrico Zio, President of the Alumni Politecnico di Milano and also delegate of the rector for individual fundraising. “The Association is a community dedicated to the development of the Politecnico, which it supports financially with both donations form its individual members and the involvement of their professional organisations in fundraising projects”.
THE PROJECTS YOU CAN SUPPORT IN THE 2022-2023 ACADEMIC YEAR SCHOLARSHIPS
By making a free donationfree donation you will help one or more students, chosen based on need and merit criteria, taking into account exam results achieved in the first semester of the academic year; or you will contribute towards a maintenance grant for a PhD student. There is also the chance to enter into the Circle of Donors: the Politecnico di Milano’s special programme dedicated to the best Laurea Magistrale (Master of Science) students. With 2,000 euros a year donors can directly finance scholarships combined with personal mentoring support. Selected students receive 10,000 euros a year for the two years of their Laurea Magistrale (Master of Science) programme.
Thursday 20 October 2022 - the Politecnico di Milano hosted the Circle of Donors, a group of alumni donors that, since 2016, has been committed to supporting the best students at the university financially and through mentoring pathways.
“The Circle was created to answer a question: what can be done to be make us more attractive to our best students? Those that receive offers of opportunities and prestigious scholarships from the best universities in the world? What be done to stop them leaving? To keep this wealth of talent in Italy and at the Politecnico di Milano?”
Thus the meeting was opened by professor Enrico Zio, the President of Alumni Politecnico di Milano and Rector’s Delegate for Alumni and Individual Fundraising: two positions that combine effectively with the Circle.
Indeed, around the table there is an elite group of very high-profile alumni; alumni that volunteer as mentors to track the development of some of the best students at the Politecnico. No less important is the support of a financial nature: each Circle student has received (or is receiving, in the case of the latest arrivals) a scholarship of 20,000 euros which is disbursed over the course of the two years of the Laurea Magistrale (equivalent to Master of Science); a subsidy capable of competing with those offered by the best international universities.
CIRCLE PROJECT: THE FIGURES
7 years since the launch of the of the programme, the Circle has collected almost 400,000 euros courtesy of 37 alumni donors who have supported 20 students. Some of these young people have graduated and are already young professionals, both in business and the world of research, and all have had great success in industries that have a significant impact on the future of innovation and society: renewable energies, automation, autonomous vehicles and energy transition.
“Had it not been for the Circle scholarship, I would not have been able to study at the Politecnico,” remarked Daniele, who, after a degree in electrical electronic engineering, works as a designer for a Korean company that develops memory chips in Italy. “But, aside from the financial side of things, I realised the true value of the Circle when I began to have doubts and questions about my future and what I was going to do once I graduated. The Circle mentors have so much experience and through them I found not the answers to my questions, as I thought, but new questions and a guide to finding the answers myself.”
Giulia, meanwhile, studied energy engineering: her dream is to work with renewable energies and to have an impact on the world in which she lives. “After my Laurea (equivalent to Bachelor of Science), I was sure I would leave Italy to do my Magistrale (equivalent to Master of Science) abroad. The Circle convinced me to stay in Italy and at the Politecnico: as they had chosen me for a prestigious scholarship and were asking me to stay, I told myself that perhaps they had seen something that I had not, that perhaps it was worth reconsidering.” Giulia went abroad all the same, rightly, on an Erasmus placement. Today, her career means she travels a lot and is building an international profile, but she says, “I have decided that Italy is where I want to live and contribute to the growth of the country.”
“There is a very close relationship between students and Alumni; Alumni that dedicate time and effort to their university with great generosity. Their support represents one of the pillars of the Politecnico di Milano,”
observed rector Ferruccio Resta, reflecting on the words of Giulia and Daniele. “Their messages give us pause for thought. On one side there is the “diritto allo studio” (right to study), on the other there is the topic of mobility. I wish to point out that from 2017 to 2021, the budget for the “diritto allo studio” grew by 50%. Today it amounts to over 24,000,000 euros, supporting almost 5,000 students. In terms of student mobility, which should be encouraged in every possible way, as we have done by entering into agreements with universities across the world, the Circle project is part of a journey of development that has seen our country become a destination and not just a launch pad. It is an element of attraction in the face of the brain drain of young talent.”
The Circle project is the tip of the iceberg of a close partnership between the Politecnico di Milano and its community of alumni, which, in the last three years, has helped to collect more than 10,000,0000 euros in donations to support the university’s projects: approximately 500,000 euros have funded almost 500 scholarships and doctorates; approximately 1,800,000 euros have contributed to the modernisation of the Politecnico’s laboratories, equipment, infrastructure and campuses; approximately 550,000 euros have funded innovative teaching projects; and more than 2,200,000 euros have been devoted to social impact research. The Alumni project has been funded thanks to almost 300,000 euros in donations.
On 3 October, the Eni Award 2022, ceremony was held at the Quirinale, attended by President Sergio Mattarella. The winners include Sinergy Flow, created by three Alumni and researchers, and Ricehouse, a startup by Alumna and architect Tiziana Monterisi, which received the the ‘Eni Joule for Entrepreneurship’ special mention..
The history of the Eni Award – as illustrated on the website – spans five continents and the careers of dozens of researchers and scientists. Since being established in 2007 as a business award, it has grown to become an internationally recognised accolade for research and technological innovation in energy. Year on year, the winning works involve significant breakthroughs that enable radical innovation in energy efficiency, renewables, decarbonisation and environmental protection.
Specifically, the ‘Eni Joule for Entrepreneurship’ award won by our Alumni rewards the growth of sustainable businesses through the “Human Knowledge” e “Energizer”schemes, which are devoted, respectively, to training a new generation of entrepreneurs and startup acceleration
“Imprese sostenibili; imprese che “camminano” nel presente ma capaci, fin d’ora, di disegnare le mappe, le strade del futuro.”
RICEHOUSE E SINERGY FLOW: DI COSA SI TRATTA?
Sinergy Flow is an early-stage startup (TRL 4) based in Milan which proposes an innovative battery for medium- and large-scale stationary energy storage (we’ve already talked about it here). The flow battery uses sulphur-rich waste from the petrochemical industry, with low installation cost and high performance. The team is made up of 3 young engineers who developed the project at the Politecnico di Milano and was represented by Alessandra Accogli (CEO and co-founder), who spoke to La Repubblica:
"Sinergy Flow started with my PhD project: the idea for a device, a battery, able to store energy for a long time, which can be combined with renewable sources, easily met the market needs. [...] The large-scale adoption of our device will have a positive impact on well-being, ensuring a better quality of air, and therefore, of life."
Ricehouse is a much more mature startup (TRL 9), based in Milan, which transforms byproducts from rice processing into natural materials for green building and bio-architecture. Today it is a benefit corporation and boasts around 15 employees (aged between 24 and 44) and is represented by Tiziana Monterisi (CEO and co-founder).
"I am an ecological native - stated Monterisi at the MPW (Most Powerful Women) International Convention by Fortune Italia (we’ve already talked about it here), "and I have always sought sustainability in the world of construction. Thanks to our creativity, but above all professional expertise and courage, I have managed to make an impact in this poorly innovative and very traditional industry. It takes a lot of passion, but above all a lot of courage and perseverance."
We've had turbulent years (to say the least). Far from being disoriented, the Alumni of the Poli ride the waves of this complexity: planning where they can, preparing for sudden changes of scenario and betting (but with full knowledge of the facts!) on the next trend. And on technology: from deep tech to IoT, from manufacturing 4.0 to full automation, from the evolution of services to the revolution in telecommunications... "WHAT NOW?" is a series of interviews with Alumni in top positions in business, culture and technology, who ask themselves: what should we expect now?
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According to a news item from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Fabio Violante is a computer engineering Alumnus ‘with a passion for hardware’. He serves as CEO at Arduino, an open-source rapid prototype platform used every day by millions of designers, architects and companies to quickly and easily bring smart objects and digital devices to life. And it is from hardware and open source that he begins to tell his vision of the future: ‘a new generation is entering the labour market. Girls and boys interested in the impact that their work has on the world’.
Impact, we ask Violante, in terms of how everyone’s job contributes to sustainability goals?‘Being mindful of impact means being aware that your own job is a piece of someone else’s work, particularly now that we rely on open source technologies. So there is the somewhat hedonistic personal taste of knowing that I’m building a piece of software which can be used by thousands of other engineers to solve a certain issue. On a higher level, the young people we see are interested in understanding how these technologies can help us confront the challenges facing our planet, like energy consumption: they’re enthusiastic when they can say they have worked on a system which allows a company to reduce their water or energy consumption by 40% and cut greenhouse gas emissions’.
THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE PANETTONE YOU WILL EAT AT CHRISTMAS (AND ON THOSE WHO BAKE IT)
Let’s go back to the collective, to a global point of view. In which direction are these new generations pushing technological innovation? When we ask about technology, Violante always brings us back down to earth:
"the main theme is not technology in itself, but the problem it helps to solve. . If you ask me what will be the next technological revolution I don’t think of a product or an algorithm, I think of daily problems, both for people and for companies, that technology could help to solve. I think of my automatic irrigation system, or of a device for feeding fish in an aquarium, of an employee in a pasta factory that always has hands covered in pasta dough and every time he has to start up a machine he has to first wash his hands to push a button; this, as well as slowing down his work, distracts him and puts him more at risk of having an accident. Or of the doctor who has to set up a treatment on a machine.
What if they could give the machine voice command despite the very noisy environment of the factory or the hospital? It is in this common use of technology that we must look. We are almost there, it’s an easy layer to implement, but lots of companies are not ready yet. Then obviously the development of artificial intelligence takes us much further. Today robots are still “semi-stupid and semi-smart””. They operate a tap but they don’t know it’s a tap, instead in a couple of years they will know it and will decide autonomously which interventions to make.
Today, in many cases, they are still blind and perform programmed repetitive tasks; in the future this will no longer be the case: in a few years' time machine vision and audio, motion control and machine learning will increase the capabilities of machines triggering a substantial and hopefully positive change in our daily lives’.
Credits: courtesy of Fabio Violante
A BOLT IS NO LONGER ONLY A BOLT
You said that companies are not ready: why?
"Not all companies understand that there is an opportunity to access technological transformations which can lead to new business models. The next step therefore is to democratise access to technology: to allow professionals without a specific training in artificial intelligence to access it, for example.
Our responsibility as engineers is to make these technologies more accessible, to lower the barriers.
The consequence of this democratisation of technology is that there are more technicians working on the same problem: people who may know little about artificial intelligence, but are experts on that problem. I’ll give you an example: an Arduino team works for a company that makes bolts, which are perhaps the least high-tech thing imaginable. Yet, bolts end up in very high-tech objects, such as space rockets and race cars. By working with the people who make bolts, we were able to figure out how to equip them with sensors that detect various parameters, such as vibration or temperature, and that can trigger alarms or make decisions. In short, they can solve problems, from the everyday ones like a leaky tap, to the space problems of a satellite".
We've had turbulent years (to say the least). Far from being disoriented, the Alumni of the Poli ride the waves of this complexity: planning where they can, preparing for sudden changes of scenario and betting (but with full knowledge of the facts!) on the next trend. And on technology: from deep tech to IoT, from manufacturing 4.0 to full automation, from the evolution of services to the revolution in telecommunications... "WHAT NOW?" is a series of interviews with Alumni in top positions in business, culture and technology, who ask themselves: what should we expect now?
__
According to a news item from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Fabio Violante is a computer engineering Alumnus ‘with a passion for hardware’. He serves as CEO at Arduino, an open-source rapid prototype platform used every day by millions of designers, architects and companies to quickly and easily bring smart objects and digital devices to life. And it is from hardware and open source that he begins to tell his vision of the future: ‘a new generation is entering the labour market. Girls and boys interested in the impact that their work has on the world’.
Impact, we ask Violante, in terms of how everyone’s job contributes to sustainability goals?‘Being mindful of impact means being aware that your own job is a piece of someone else’s work, particularly now that we rely on open source technologies. So there is the somewhat hedonistic personal taste of knowing that I’m building a piece of software which can be used by thousands of other engineers to solve a certain issue. On a higher level, the young people we see are interested in understanding how these technologies can help us confront the challenges facing our planet, like energy consumption: they’re enthusiastic when they can say they have worked on a system which allows a company to reduce their water or energy consumption by 40% and cut greenhouse gas emissions’.
THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE PANETTONE YOU WILL EAT AT CHRISTMAS (AND ON THOSE WHO BAKE IT)
Let’s go back to the collective, to a global point of view. In which direction are these new generations pushing technological innovation? When we ask about technology, Violante always brings us back down to earth:
"the main theme is not technology in itself, but the problem it helps to solve. . If you ask me what will be the next technological revolution I don’t think of a product or an algorithm, I think of daily problems, both for people and for companies, that technology could help to solve. I think of my automatic irrigation system, or of a device for feeding fish in an aquarium, of an employee in a pasta factory that always has hands covered in pasta dough and every time he has to start up a machine he has to first wash his hands to push a button; this, as well as slowing down his work, distracts him and puts him more at risk of having an accident. Or of the doctor who has to set up a treatment on a machine.
What if they could give the machine voice command despite the very noisy environment of the factory or the hospital? It is in this common use of technology that we must look. We are almost there, it’s an easy layer to implement, but lots of companies are not ready yet. Then obviously the development of artificial intelligence takes us much further. Today robots are still “semi-stupid and semi-smart””. They operate a tap but they don’t know it’s a tap, instead in a couple of years they will know it and will decide autonomously which interventions to make.
Today, in many cases, they are still blind and perform programmed repetitive tasks; in the future this will no longer be the case: in a few years' time machine vision and audio, motion control and machine learning will increase the capabilities of machines triggering a substantial and hopefully positive change in our daily lives’.
Credits: courtesy of Fabio Violante
A BOLT IS NO LONGER ONLY A BOLT
You said that companies are not ready: why?
"Not all companies understand that there is an opportunity to access technological transformations which can lead to new business models. The next step therefore is to democratise access to technology: to allow professionals without a specific training in artificial intelligence to access it, for example.
Our responsibility as engineers is to make these technologies more accessible, to lower the barriers.
The consequence of this democratisation of technology is that there are more technicians working on the same problem: people who may know little about artificial intelligence, but are experts on that problem. I’ll give you an example: an Arduino team works for a company that makes bolts, which are perhaps the least high-tech thing imaginable. Yet, bolts end up in very high-tech objects, such as space rockets and race cars. By working with the people who make bolts, we were able to figure out how to equip them with sensors that detect various parameters, such as vibration or temperature, and that can trigger alarms or make decisions. In short, they can solve problems, from the everyday ones like a leaky tap, to the space problems of a satellite".
As if the normal study load was not enough, at the Politecnico there is an advanced training programme for Laura Magistrale’s students who wish to become experts in sustainable development issues. This is the Polimi Ambassadorprogramme: professor Isabella Novavice dean of the School of Industrial and Information Engineering and director of the Ambassador project, tells us about it.
Isabella Nova
"It is linked to the “Technologies for Transitions” experiment, a cross-university agreement between the polytechnic universities of Bari, Milan and Turin, the universities of Bologna, Napoli Federico II, Padova, Palermo and La Sapienza in Rome. It is heading in the direction of the sustainable development goals of digital and energy transitions, which has opened up new scenarios and new challenges and which is reflected in technical-scientific professions".
And therefore, continues Nova, it is also reflected in the teaching and the universities that have the task of training these new professional figures.
We are talking about professional figures with a solid scientific and technological base, but open to geopolitical challenges, integrated in a complex and interdisciplinary system, who know how to design with the new emergencies and changes that we are experiencing in mind. The Politecnico has therefore made available to the students who so wish, in an entirely inclusive and unrestricted manner, the opportunity to supplement their own studies with topical courses: "the main aim of an Ambassador study path is to gain interdisciplinary tools and methods and an aptitude to working with a more systematic vision and in multi-sectoral environments"
Photo by Headway on Unsplash
In the first year and a half of this experiment (it began in the last academic year), there have been around 800 students who have decided to take it: 800 students have invested their time and energy into taking supplementary courses and building their own study plan, paying particular attention to these issues.
"Students are asked to put in extra effort: not only to obtain the classic 120 credits needed for a Laurea Magistrale, but to earn a total of 130 credits, 30 of which must be in courses on the topic for which they wish to become an Ambassador; the relevant courses are to be chosen from a list made available by the Politecnico and must not belong to the students' regular study programme. New ad hoc courses have also been activated, each with contributions from at least two professors who typically belong to different departments, again aiming for greater interdisciplinarity and designed for a mixed attendance: designers, architects and engineers all together".
The first pilot experiences of the project are the training of qualified engineering skills to tackle the multidimensional problems posed by the ecological transition (Green Technologies) and by the digital transition of infrastructures (Smart Infrastructures), topics that are also of great strategic importance within the perspective of using the NRRP’s measures for transversal skills. And the project is set to grow. As of this September, a Polimi Ambassador programme in Inclusive Design has been added that is pending approval and will be active in September 2023. This is a new programme in ‘Creative Thinking’ technologies. Talks are underway with the Ministry to formalise these programmes at a national level.
“Developing multidisciplinary skills means to prepare the new generations for the challenges of the future, characterised by a growing complexity. The Politecnico di Milano’s initiatives and the university system aimed at a “horizontal” education, far from the traditional multidisciplinary and exclusively technical-engineering approach, are heading in this direction. A vision aimed at the big issues of sustainability and an evolution of skills which must be nurtured even within career paths. It is no coincidence that the major issues linked to energy, digitalisation and green infrastructure are at the heart of the NRRP and the interests of the European Community. Cutting-edge issues in which we must invest as a university system, as a productive fabric, and, ultimately, as a country,“
In the 2020-2022 three-year period, the Politecnico has received received more than 10 million euros in donations from individuals and companies. “We’ve hit the target which we set at the beginning of the three years, as community of donors”, commented professor Enrico Zio, President of the Alumni Politecnico di Milano and also delegate of the rector for individual fundraising. “The Association is a community dedicated to the development of the Politecnico, which it supports financially with both donations form its individual members and the involvement of their professional organisations in fundraising projects”.
First of all, supporting excellence: of the 10 million, around half is used to fund 483 scholarshipsdesigned to reward deserving students. A percentage is reserved to encourage women who wish to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to enrol at the Poli and another (around 600 thousand euros) has funded 15 doctoral scholarships: 15 young researchers who carried out research projects. The main topics they focus on are linked to technology in health, the world of ecological transition and transport.
Around 1,800,000 euros have helped to update the laboratories, instruments and tools, infrastructure and the Politecnico campus . Around 550 thousand euros have funded innovative teachingprojects. More than 2,200,000 euros have been dedicated to high social impact research projects (you can discover them all at this link). The Alumni project has been funded thanks to nearly 300 thousand euros in donations.
"I am particularly grateful and proud to be able to say that these funds have allowed lots of students to attend the Politecnico’, professor Zio comments. "This exceptional result has been achieved thanks to the backing of the Alumni and, in this case, there is also often the added value of meeting with donors, who are accomplished professionals, who make available not only their economic support but also their time and their expertise. To continue in this direction, I invite you to continue to donate and support the activities of the Alumni Politecnico di Milano, to enable the tools of this community to grow so that it becomes increasingly more participative and cohesive."
Simone Callegari, Materials Engineering and Nanotechnology 2015 alumnus, receives the CERN Alumni Champion Award for his contributions on the CERN blog during the pandemic.
Ilaria Marelli, designer and Architecture alumna, receives theWallpaper Design Awards 2022in the Best Outdoor Living category for her Calipso sofa, “the floating sofa”, designed for Ethimo.
Andrea Bernasconi, Fabio Biondani, Luca Capoferri, Alberto Favier, Federico Gualdoni, Carlo Riboldi, Lorenzo Trainelli and Carmen Velarde Lopez de Ayala, the inventors of HYBRIS: structural batteries for electric aircraft
Luca Magagnin, Gabriele Panzeri, Eugenio Gilbertini, Alessandra Accogli, Matteo Salerno and Luca Bertoli, inventors of SINERGY: a metal-polysulphide flow cell battery
Paolo Asti, Carlo Carone, Sonia Calzoni, Massimo Roj, Margherita Carabillò and Pasquale Francesco Mariani Orlandi: the Alumni at the head of the 7 projects awarded by Urban File.
Alumni Naomi Hasuike, Luca Catrame and Andrea Sechi are part of the Makio Hasuike & Co team that created LAMBROgio
Alumnus Felice Contessini is part of the team that designed E-Worker
Eduardo Staszowski is among the editors of Designing in Dark Times, ‘a book and a new series to kick-start a reflection on the reasons for and responsibilities of design today’
Credits: vitra.comCredits: fiamitalia.itCredits: Gianluca Ripa on TwitterCredits: GoliathCredits: www.innovazionesociale.orgCredits: Andrea SechiCredits: Merlo GroupCredits: ADI
JULY
Professor Maria Prandini is elected as President of the International Federation of Automatic Control
Credits: Politecnico di Milano
AUGUST
Manfredi Rizza brings home the gold for Italy at the Canoe Sprint European Championships in Munich - Men's K2.200m
Pietro Ravasi wins the Italian championship title in powerchair hockey with the Sharks
Foto di: Sharks Monza, Marco Mancinelli e Mirco Esposto
SEPTEMBER
Eleonora Andreis and Mariachiara Gallia, researchers from the Politecnico, are winners of the prestigious Amelia Earhart Fellowship.
Annalisa Andaloro, Giulia Rossi and Maria Vittoria Trussoni are the 3 Politecnico Alumnae in the Fortune 40 under 40.
Credits: FORTUNE Italia
Biennale 2023: the alumni and architects Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino and Claudia Mainardi in the Fosbury Architecture collective win the Italian Pavilion project
Giorgia Lupi wins the National Design Award for Communication Design.
Credits: Giorgia Lupi on Instagram
OCTOBER
Rajendra Kumar, architect and Politecnico di Milano alumnus, is selected from among the Most Admired Education Influencers in India
In the presence of Sergio Mattarella, the winners of the Eni Award 2022. These included the multi-award winning Synergy Flow, created by three Alumni and Politecnico researchers, and Ricehouse, a start-up by Alumna and architect Tiziana Monterisi.
Credis: eni.com
NOVEMBER
Alumna Elena Bottinelli, an engineering graduate and Head of Innovation and Digitalisation at the San Donato Group, has been included in the list of the 50 Most Powerful Women by the magazine Fortune Italia.
Credits: FORTUNE Italia
DECEMBER
Paola Scarpa, Management Engineering Alumna, is one of the winners of the international Standout Woman Award, an international award dedicated to women who have distinguished themselves through their talent, courage, sensitivity, determination and actions, becoming an example to new generations.
The new Lerici Buildinghas been opened on the Leonardo Campus and will be known as “Edificio 3A” as of today.
The project expands the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, providing the Politecnico community with further high-quality areas in which to fully enjoy our campus.
The new building has been constructed over an area of 1,278m2 between buildings 3 and 5 and via Celoria that was previously occupied by the old Lerici building, itself constructed between the ‘40s and ‘50s.
With a rectangular footprint, the new construction consists of a lower ground floor, two floors above ground and a flat roof with solar panels at different heights. The composition of the building has enabled the creation of three levels of green roofing, on which nine forest trees have been planted.
The building features curtain walls using glass and opaque panels, with visible blocks of concrete masonry and finished with coloured plaster.
The façade facing via Celoria is an intense green so as to create vertical continuity with the garden terraces.
The inauguration was attended by Rector Ferruccio Resta, Vice Rector Emilio Faroldi, General Director Graziano Dragoni, Director of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Alberto Guadagnini and the Architect Daniel Marcaccio of the Real Estate, Construction and Development Division, responsible for the project.
We've had turbulent years (to say the least). Far from being disoriented, the Alumni of the Poli ride the waves of this complexity: planning where they can, preparing for sudden changes of scenario and betting (but with full knowledge of the facts!) on the next trend. And on technology: from deep tech to IoT, from manufacturing 4.0 to full automation, from the evolution of services to the revolution in telecommunications... "WHAT NOW?" is a series of interviews with Alumni in top positions in business, culture and technology, who ask themselves: what should we expect now?
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Her great-grandfather made pasta dough mixers. From wire drawing machines to systems for processing metal cables, the step is far from short: over 120 years of history, to be precise. Today MFL, founded by Mario Frigerio in 1897, is an engineering multinational with 450 employees, a consolidated turnover of €100 million and offices in Italy but also in Germany, Spain, China and the United States. The core business is the design and manufacture of machinery for the production of cables, wires and ropes in steel, aluminium and copper. Machinery produced entirely in Europe and exported all over the world.
“Metal cables, ropes and wires can be found everywhere,” explains Lucia Frigerio (Mario’s great-granddaughter and Alumna in Mechanical Engineering), today at the helm of the group, which has always remained in the hands of the family throughout its numerous transformations. They are found everywhere, literally: in sponge scourers, in the hangers for wardrobes (in Milan they are called omètti), in the cables that operate elevators, cranes, cable cars, freight elevators, in the walls of our houses and in reinforced concrete, in bridges, and even in all electronic devices, in energy distribution networks, in telecommunication networks.
“There is low-carbon steel, which is used in low added value productions, like the domestic products you mentioned such as sponges, but also supermarket trolleys, nails etc. High-carbon steel is mainly used in construction. Copper and aluminium, on the other hand, are used in telecommunications and power transmission, both energy networks and vehicles.” They are the threads with which the world we have built around us are woven. MFL group produces the machines that “spin them”.
MACHINES THAT COST MILLIONS OF EURO AREN’T SOLD EVERY DAY
“Our plants have an average life of 30 years; in fact, we don’t sell them every day. Obviously we cover maintenance and retrofitting, that goes without saying, but our main market, today, serves the increase in the production capacity of our customers (precisely the producers of these threads, such as Prysmian, a giant that has grown in the fragmented Italian market). They are materials that are consumed, so production is constant.” And the market too. Constant, reliable and predictable, or at least it was until a couple of years ago. But Lucia was not caught unprepared. "The new frontier of manufacturing is to servitize machines. That is, I sell you the asset, but this asset has the ability to give you information that is as valuable as the product it produces.”
In itself, this is nothing new: the trend began back in the 1970s, but of course the quantity and quality of the data that we can collect today are far greater. Potentially, at least. And it's a growing world. “Knowing this, we have been working for years to further enrich the set of information that our machines can provide, in order to help both our customers and us make strategic decisions. The novelty in this type of manufacturing is that we do not want to provide a one-shot service, but a sort of subscription, on the model of high-tech and deep-tech companies.”
MFL (courtesy of Lucia Frigerio)
MAYBE WE HAVE NOT YET GRASPED WHAT MANUFACTURING CAN DO IF IT MOVES TO THE CLOUD
According to this model, explains Lucia, MFL would manage the servers with the data extracted from the connected machines.
“In addition to selling the machinery, we would obtain recurring revenue on the same sale, in exchange for real-time information on its operation, for example for diagnostics or risk prediction, and prompt action in the event of automatic reporting of problems. This is the near future, if we think in the short term. Considering an even later step, in the medium term (5-10 years), this investment will have allowed us to gather a great deal of information. Which can then be used to structure predictive algorithms, not only to detect problems promptly, but also to foresee them, to plan strategic investments, to launch research and development campaigns.”
The “WHAT, NOW?”, therefore, moves in the direction of an ever greater interaction between manufacturing and artificial intelligence. “Yes, but not only that. The point is man-machine, or rather, system-machine interaction. It is no longer a question of automating manufacturing, but of sharing and rationalizing the entire production chain, from those who extract the raw material, to the steel mill, through us who manufacture the machines, to the cable manufacturer and finally to those who use it: the whole value chain would benefit from this supervision. And today it doesn't exist.”
IF YOU JUST WANTED TO BUY A MACHINE, YOU'RE IN THE WRONG CENTURY
Why doesn't it exist?, we ask Lucia. "The technology to do it exists, but we need to change the mentalitythe paradigm. Proposing the sale of digital services, for those who manufacture machines, is complicated: because you are used to selling “hard metal”. It's a big jump from there to selling impalpable digital services. And before convincing the customer, who is also used to buying “hard metal” and who often does not even have 56k in the factory, I have to convince my sellers that the main product is no longer the machine but the service, the cloud, the supervision of the supply chain. That is the direction in which I want to lead the group.” And how is it going? “Well, for the goals we set ourselves in these early years: that is, countless pitches, regardless of the situation.
The difficulty for my sales reps was understanding that it doesn’t matter whether the customer is interested or not, we have to propose this supervision, and above all we must understand how the idea is received. It's the only way you can get a sense of how to move on the market. Twenty years ago, when the value of a machine was 100, the customer perceived that 90% consisted of the vehicle and 10% automation. Today the proportion is 30% machine, 30% automation and 30% services. Look at Tesla: I don't buy it for the mechanics, which are ugly, badly made, they break. I buy it because it is a computer on 4 wheels and it offers me services, and it is these services that I pay for very year. This is the concept: we are still at a very early stage, even before embryonic. But we have bet on it heavily and invested in a third company that does just that. We are sowing the seeds; sooner or later the flowers will bloom.”
PRODUCTS WILL NO LONGER BE TRADED COMMODITIES: MANUFACTURERS WILL SELL SERVICES, CONNECTION, INTERACTION
Therefore the next technological revolution, according to Lucia, will not be a technology or a set of technologies, but the real and complete integration of technologies that already exist.. A much greater leap than we imagine when we simply think of autonomous driving or quantum computers. And, speaking of Tesla, traditionally it is the automotive market that drives industrial innovation, a sort of litmus test of technological progress. But is that still the case?
“I don't think so,” says Lucia. The automotive industry is losing this position of leadership. Not because there is anyone else, but because there will no longer be any product capable of being at the cutting edge. The time it takes to produce it, and it is already obsolete. The physical product will be a commodity, the real saleable product will be how we interact with it.”
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