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Selling the supply chain supervision: interview with Lucia Frigerio, fourth generation entrepreneur  

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”.  

Lucia Frigerio
Credits: Polimi

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.”  

Lucia Frigerio
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.” 

We will explore these topics in depth at the 11th Alumni Politecnico di Milano Convention. Register for the in-person event.

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Credits home: www.expometals.net

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Regeneration of the Bovisa-Goccia area

A Memorandum of Intent was signed for the completion of a sustainable urban regeneration and quality project in the “Bovisa-Goccia-Villapizzone” area of Milan. 

The project, which involves Renzo Piano among others, covers an area of about 325,000m2, owned by the Municipality of Milan (about 234,000m2) and the Politecnico (about 91,000m2), with the aim of redeveloping the Bovisa-Goccia area. 

Various works are planned: 

New university campus: the Politecnico di Milano envisages the completion of redevelopment work within the area for the purpose of creating a scientific park/innovation hub and an expansion of the current Bovisa Campus, with areas dedicated to services for students and local residents. 

Civic schools: the construction of two buildings for the Fondazione Milano - Scuole Civiche is planned as part of the Bovisa-Goccia project, with the aim of gathering the city's civic schools in a single hub. 

Bovisa and Villapizzone stations: improvement works are planned for the links between the two railway stations and between the same and the new residential properties expected within the Goccia area by means of a new integrated system of provision for cyclists and pedestrians, tramways and roads.  

Urban forest: the creation of a large, public, urban park is planned by 2030, by reusing existing green areas and programming further planting as part of an innovative process of reforestation.  

The Memorandum of Intent was signed by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, the Ministry of University and Research, Politecnico di Milano, the Lombardy Region, the Municipality of Milan, FNM, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (FS Group).

"This protocol is a concrete step toward implementing the redevelopment project for the area," Urban Regeneration Councilor Giancarlo Tancredi La Repubblica: "this section of Milan will become another part of the polycentric city."

Credits home: Milano Città Stato

Credits header: Urban File

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Sound-trapping panel-labyrinth: an invention by three Politecnico's Alumni

Forbes has dubbed them "the engineers of silence": Luca D’Alessandro, Giovanni Capellariand Stefano Caverniare three Politecnico's Alumni, researchers and founders of the start-up Phononic Vibes, born in 2018 as a Politecnico di Milano's spin-off which has recently won a 6 million euro funding round. 

phononic-vibes
Credits: Forbes

Underpinning this rapid rise is an invention (and 12 patents): a modular device for the isolation of low-frequency and broad-spectrum vibrations, in other words noise and vibration absorbing panels made of "labyrinth metamaterials" capable of absorbing both sound and mechanical waves. These metamaterials are artificially created with specific electromagnetic properties that distinguish them from other materials; their macroscopic characteristics depend not only on their molecular structure but also on their structural geometry.

They have a unique "labyrinth-like" designthat allows the wave to be reflected several times within the structure, thus progressively reducing until it disappears. Its periodic structures are made from materials commonly used in civil and mechanical engineering, such as steel and concrete, or even 3D-printed recycled plastics. Several of the devices can be assembled side by side to create a true soundproof barrier. The device is therefore able to limit the propagation of vibrations, both elastic and acoustic, generated by traffic, machinery and equipment, with the aim of mitigating against both structural damage to buildings and noise associated with an urban environment. Fonte: Polilink  

EFFECTIVE, BEAUTIFUL AND ECONOMIC 

Phononic Vibes' special feature is its panels, which are 3D-printed from waste plastic and enable a vibration reduction several orders of magnitude higher than that achieved by currently available technologies on the market, all at a significantly lower cost. It can eliminate many types of noise - from medium-frequency sounds, characteristic of speech and some musical instruments, to low-frequency sounds, caused by engines. It also has a wide range of applications, from construction to automotive to domestic uses.  

phononic-vibes
Credits: Sole24ore

Forbes has reported that the technology has passed the scrutinyof what has become known as the "Harvard of transport", i.e., Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company. "We developed a transparent, highly absorbent panel to be used around stations or railway tracks, as an alternative to the steel walls currently used to reduce noise pollution," says D'Alessandro. "A glass window has a completely different effect in an urban area, as glass usually reflects sound, instead of absorbing it.” Unlike the one produced by Phononic Vibes. 

THE FOUNDING ALUMNI 

Phononic Vibes’ journey is one of many examples of how the technology transfer of the Politecnico di Milano has a concrete impact on the high-tech industry, bringing the results of research activities out of the laboratories and into the corporate world.

Giovanni Capellariobtained his PhD degree from the Politecnico di Milano in 2018 with a thesis in Machine Learning, in addition to working and spending several months at the ETH University in Zurich.Stefano Cavernigraduated in Civil Engineering in 2017 with a thesis in the field of metamaterials, having specialised in Structures. 

Luca D’Alessandroreceived his PhD from the Politecnico di Milano, after having also spent a period of time abroad at MIT in Boston, specialising in the field of metamaterials and the optimisation of periodic structures for acoustic and vibration isolation. It was actually Luca's PhD thesis that was the starting point for the start-up. After participating in Switch2Product, the Politecnico di Milano's Innovation Challenge, Luca decided to embark on this entrepreneurial path by partnering with the two other founders Giovanni, a PhD colleague, and Stefano, a colleague and thesis student at the Politecnico di Milano. The business has experienced rapid growth, with its operational team now consisting of 10 people. Fonte: Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, “Il coraggio di innovare”  

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Prof. Alfio Quarteroni has been awarded the 2023 Lagrange Prize

Alfio Quarteroni, director of MOX (Laboratory of Modelling and Scientific Computing) and professor at the Politecnico di Milano, was awarded the 2023 Lagrange Prize by ICIAM, the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. 

The Lagrange Prize is awarded every four years to internationally recognise mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to applied mathematics and who have undertaken innovative work in the field of numerical analysis during their careers. 

According to ICIAM’s website, "The ICIAM Lagrange 2023 Prize is awarded to Alfio Quarteroni for his ground-breaking work in finite element and spectral methods, domain decomposition methods, discontinuous Galerkin methods, numerical solution of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, multiphysics and multiscale modeling - with applications to fluid dynamics, geophysics, the human heart and circulatory system, the Covid-19 epidemic, as well as improvement of sports performance for the America's Cup sailing competition."

Quarteroni had already been listed as a runner-up in 2022, making him the first Italian mathematician to do so. He was also 48th in the world according to the "Top mathematics scientist" ranking published by the company Research.com, which orders these luminaries according to the number of their works that have been cited in scientific research. In fact, the Politecnico professor has been cited in publications 38,000 times by both Italian and international researchers. 

The 2023 Lagrange Prize will be awarded during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, ICIAM 2023, which is due to be held in Tokyo from 20 to 25 August 2023.   

Discover more: Prof. Maria Prandini elected President of the International Federation of Automatic Control 

Credits home & cover photo: Linkedin

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What to do if you meet a self-driving droid on the road? 

Maybe you have heard of YAPE, the self-driving ground drone created for "last mile" deliveries. It is designed to transport small packages, up to 10 kg in weight, between pavements, footpaths, vehicles, rails, cobblestones and traffic lights, tackling any unforeseen obstacles the metropolitan jungle throws its way in the shortest possible time and with maximum energy efficiency, at a speed of 6 km/h. It was conceived by a team of Politecnico di Milano researchers from the MOVE research group, one of the world's leading ones in the field of autonomous driving, which developed and constructed YAPE in collaboration with the e-Novia enterprise factory (discussed in MAP #7)..  

The news is that testing in an urban environment started this summer: for the next few months, 10 YAPEs will roam 'freely' (under careful supervision) across UpTown, the new high-tech residential district in Milan's Cascina Merlata area. "We are working to develop the collaborative and hyper-connected environment that characterises today's modern Smart Cities," said Vincenzo Russi, Alumnus, CEO of e-Novia and President of YAPE, "starting with the possibility of providing innovative vehicles for the transportation of goods. A project that in Italy, but also in Europe, must take into account the particular configuration of cities, which are very different from, for example, American cities. Our autonomous drone is designed to be able to move between medieval lanes and the complex topologies of Italian and European cities, enabling truly sustainable delivery". 

We also discussed this with Enrico Silani, Alumnus, Chief of Entrepreneur at e-Novia and Managing Director of the newly founded YAPE S.R.Lhe is the person who has steered YAPE's development, from creating a prototype to founding the company. "We were given the go-ahead to experiment with YAPE," he explains, "thanks to the collaboration between the Department for Digital Transformation, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, and the City of Milan, as part of Sperimentazione Italia - the Regulatory Sandbox that authorises start-ups, companies, universities and research centres to experiment on innovative projects through a temporary exemption from current regulations”. 

#1: IF YOU WANT TO BUY ONE FOR YOUR HOME... 

First of all, we wanted to know who the YAPE drone is aimed at: is it designed to be sold to homeowners too? "We have not set ourselves a limit, but the diplomatic answer is no: YAPE is designed to be part of a logistics system, also for cost reasons. Generally speaking, costs in the digital electronics field follow a curve that sees significant reductions in the computing power of systems. However, in the past year this trend has changed and costs have multiplied for the same performance. So we are in a situation where it is impossible to make predictions.

The cost of raw materials, not to mention electronics, also varies from week to week. Given this situation, how can you analyse the market, calculate if a particular strategy will work or even simply provide a quote to a potential customer? “Quotations vary according to business transactions, which is now true for all vendors, from traders to service providers. The seller establishes a price according to the time that the customer is willing to wait. We operate on a case-by-case basis and, if the customer has entered into a contract with us which defines a price, we have to honour that, even if conditions change. Sometimes we find that the agreed price is below the production cost, in which case we open negotiations with the customer to see if they are willing to compromise. This is a bit like the conversations that we have with our suppliers.

. It is a very complex management engineering problem that forces us to review the hardware and software architectures of our systems, identifying the components that are more readily available than others on the market so that we can adjust as necessary. This allows us to keep the price of our product under control”.  

yape
Credits: courtesy of YAPE

#2: IN THE EVENT THAT A CLAIM IS MADE, IS THE DRONE ALWAYS RIGHT? 

Or, in other words, who gives it a driver’s licence? "It doesn't require a driver's licens: first of all, because it has a cylinder capacity of less than 50 cc. YAPE has not yet been officially recognised by the Highway Code, but theoretically such objects are halfway between a pedestrian, in the sense that they obey the same traffic rules as a pedestrian, and a vehicle such as an electric wheelchair (in terms of size and power). And then there is the fact that there isn’t a human driving it, but it is instead powered by artificial intelligence. A technical experimentation will gather data to better understand whether YAPE is capable of safely navigating a public area.”.

But what happens if YAPE runs a red light, for example? In this case again, the question is too human-centric: it is very difficult for an artificial intelligence to commit such a trivial offence, because it is equipped with sensors and algorithms that can handle a large number of predictable situations like this.  

#3: SHOULD I HOLD THE LIFT DOORS OPEN FOR IT? 

This is more so a question of how the drone behaves when met with different terrains and obstacles: for example, does it take the lift or the stairs?

"Let's not think about the older models of lifts we see today, which would require YAPE to have an extendible arm to push buttons placed at eye level (remember that YAPE is about half a metre tall). Instead, it is designed to interact with systems capable of exchanging messages, such as smart buildings and IoT systems, meaning it could call the lift via Bluetooth, for example.

From a technical point of view, climbing stairs and pressing buttons could certainly be possible, but it adds levels of complexity that risk compromising YAPE's cost-effectiveness. It's all a question of the cost-benefit ratio. The Cascina Merlata is a new generation of smart city district and is itself an experiment, so it is easier for YAPE to navigate”. 

yape
Credits: courtesy of YAPE

#4: DOES IT EXPECT ME TO SAY GOOD MORNING TO HIM?  

What happens if YAPE gets hit by a football kicked by children playing outside? Or if it comes across someone with reduced mobility? How does it first interact with pedestrians and other road users? "We have ensured that it can distinguish natural interactions with people or objects, such as cars and motorbikes, from those that are attempting to attack or vandalise YAPE. Natural interaction is one of the most studied concepts in the world; we are also undertaking a research project with the Politecnico to model pedestrian behaviour when faced with moving versus passive obstacles. The main result we are seeing is that YAPE is very positively received: it is new and therefore generates curiosity.

Then there is the question of design: YAPE has been designed to come across as friendly and empathetic. Let's go back to the elevator case. It is the same problem that we also ask ourselves about our 'fellow humans': how should I deal with those around me? Should I speak? Should I shut up? So much so that we are implementing a voice interaction system so that YAPE can give cadenced information on what it is doing”.  

RULE #5: WHAT IF THERE IS AN UNFORSEEN EVENT? 

What happens if someone attacks him? "YAPE is equipped with a series of algorithms to detect being lifted from the ground, burglary attempts, intrusions, tampering and collisions. It is equipped with a GPS tracker and is in continuous contact with a control room, which allows operators to receive alarm signals, check its telemetry status and have access to a remote control component. But even here we are not really talking about 'hitches'.

It is, rather, a question of risk assessment, it is about the risk/benefit ratio. It is clear that we cannot protect it from every eventuality: technically everything is feasible, but building a device with the same anti-intrusion system as an ATM just to deliver a small package is not cost-effective. We haven't mentioned it, but the same applies when human beings perform operations. We see situations on a daily basis where the courier delivering our parcels leaves the van unlocked or the bicycle unattended whilst walking to our front door to get a signature, taking the risk of leaving the goods unattended for a short period of time.

When we talk about safety issues, dealing with a machine raises questions that we ignore with procedures that involve human intervention , even if they still apply. When we delegate responsibility to a computer, we instinctively ask questions that, in the case of human operators, users no longer worry about”.

Discover more: YAPE, the autonomous driving robot made in Politecnico

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GIRLS@POLIMI 2022: 15 engineering students honoured

Susan, Giulia C., Sara, Lucrezia, Federica, Chiara, Susanna, Francesca S., Anna, Beatrice, Ludovica, Raffaella, Giulia D., Virginia and Francesca P. are this year's winners of the 15 scholarships awarded as part of Girls@Polimi, a project within the Politecnico di Milano to support female students who, after high school, decide to undertake studies in the field of STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

The students were honoured at an event held on Thursday 29th September in the presence of Professor Donatella Sciuto, pro-rector of the Politecnico di Milano, and the donors.

The girls, enrolled in engineering programmes with a low number of female students, receive scholarships, each worth €8,000 per year, with the chance to renew them for their next two years of study. On this edition, the scholarships have been funded by 9 companies (Gruppo Autostrade per l’Italia, Bain & Company Italy, Banco BPM, Eurofins Foundation, Fastweb, Intesa Sanpaolo, Leonardo, Gruppo Nestlé in Italia, NHOA), by theUniversity itself and by private donors, alumni of Politecnico di Milano.

Girls@Polimi is an initiative of Gender POP, one of the lines of action specified in the Polytechnic Equal Opportunities strategic programme with which the University is committed to guaranteeing an inclusive and respectful study and work environment.

You too can support the Girls @ Polimi scholarships with a donation starting from 10 euros. Click here .

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LICIACube witnessed the NASA/DART impact test with an asteroid

Along night time, September 26-27 the NASA DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally impacted, at almost 25000 km/h, the asteroid Dimorphos, the smaller body in the Didymos. binary asteroid system.DART represents the first attempt to experimentally verify the humanity capability to deflect potentially Earth-threatening asteroid by driving a space probe to crash into the celestial body at maximum relative speed to shift the natural body orbit.

A crucial role in the mission is played by LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids), the small spacecraft entirely Italian-made, which will go down in history as the first European CubeSat to fly in deep space, far from our protected terrestrial environment.

liciacube
Credits: asi

LICIACube, infatti, dopo essersi staccato lo scorso 12 settembre dalla sonda madre DART, è transitato a poche decine di chilometri di distanza dall’asteroide colpito a una velocità di 6-7 km/s, affrontando la nuvola di frammenti per poterne acquisire immagini e riprendere, con le sue camere di bordo, il cratere formatosi, al meglio della risoluzione possibile, consentendo di raccogliere dati fondamentali per lo studio del piccolo corpo celeste e unico testimone della dinamica dell’urto con Dimorphos.

The ASTRA research group researchers, led by professor Michèle Lavagna, Giovanni Zanotti, Michele Ceresoli and Andrea Capannolo from the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology gave a key contribution to this futuristic mission success. During the past months, they hard worked in defining the LICIACube trajectory from the deployment until the asteroid flyby, while during the last weeks, after LICIA release from DART, they redesigned the crucial orbital manoeuvres to correct the CubeSat trajectory, exploiting the data sent on Earth by the small probe. Throughout the whole project, they worked in synergy with the Italian Space Agency, University of Bologna, Argotec S.r.l. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory personell.

The maneouvers they constantly worked on and performed by the small on-board engine, where aimed to avoid the debris generated by the impact while optimally pointing the on-board cameras to take the highest number of useful images, which will be later downloaded to Earth, to let the National Institute of Astrophysics scientists, coordinated by Dr Elisabetta Dotto, leader of the mission, work on their postprocessing.

LICIA represents a technological pathfinder and a primacy in the CubeSat arena, as it paves the way for such class of satellites to gaina role even on highly challenging space missions; moreover, LICIA witnesses a successful and profitable collaboration between Academy, Research Center and small enterprise, under the coordination of the Italian Space Agency, confirming the excellence of the technical-scientific competences of our Country and the professionality of our young researchers in an extremely high-profile international arena,

says Michèle Lavagna.

Read: https://www.polimi.it/apertura/dettaglio-apertura/home/liciacube-testimonia-limpatto-di-nasadart-con-un-asteroid

Credits cover image: ASI/Argotec

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Alumna Giorgia Lupi wins the National Design Award 2022 

Giorgia Lupi, Alumna PhD in Design at Politecnico di Milano, is the winner of the National Design Award 2022 for Communication Design. The award, presented by Cooper Hewitt and the Smithsonian Design Museum, recognises professionals who have distinguished themselves through their innovative impact in design. 

Lupi, over the years, has become a prominent voice in the field of data design: her work follows the philosophy of “data humanism”, or the idea that data design can be used to tell the stories behind numbers and statistics, which transform from impersonal and intimidating to so "human". 

giorgia lupi
Credits: Instagram

“With data we can write rich and meaningful stories. We can teach the reader's eye to become familiar with visual languages that convey the true depth of complex stories." 
 

writes Giorgia Lupi in her “Data Humanism manifesto”.

Her work stands out for the innovative way in which it synthesizes data, it tells a story capable of making the concepts conveyed by the data more accessible and easy to understand. Over the years, Lupi has worked for big brands such as Google, IBM and Deloitte, and has been published - among others - by the New York Times, Corriere della Sera and Wired. Her work is also exhibited in the permanent collection of the MoMa

“Sono incredibilmente onorata di annunciare che sono stata selezionata per ricevere il 2022 National Design Award for Communication Design (!!!). Presentati dal Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, e annunciati oggi, i National Design Awards celebrano i risultati eccezionali e l’innovazione nel design. …Per un designer non c’è niente di più grande. In qualità di professionista della data visualization nominata nella categoria del design della comunicazione per questo premio, vedo questo come un riconoscimento dell’importante ruolo che i dati svolgono sempre più spesso nelle nostre vite e del potere del design di usarli come risorsa per raccontare storie.” 

comments Lupi.

Credits home/header: Giorgia Lupi IG

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The prodigy that runs on two wheels  

Polimi Motorcycle Factory is a sports team at the Politecnico di Milano created in 2015 in order to take part in the international MotoStudentcompetition, which is held every two years at the international MotorLand Aragón circuit in Spain. The teams are tasked with designing, building, managing and racing an endothermic or electric motorbike.  

The competition is split into various stages: the first assesses the industrial design and the business plan while the second evaluates the performance of the prototype in static and dynamic tests, which culminate in a weekend of racing. Azul Amadeo is a last-year student of a Laurea Magistrale (equivalent to Master of Science) in Design & Engineering. She is the head of the fairings department in the Polimi Motorcycle Factory (PMF to its friends). “I thought about finishing my bachelor's degree at the Poli before going elsewhere to do a master’s. But then found PMF and my life changed course. I found the consistency that I was missing, a family and also lots of headaches... and an environment in which industrial design can express itself, where cut things that work are beautiful and beautiful things can work cut .And so I stayed for a master’s.”  

Azul joined the team in January 2018: “There’s an old rivalry between designers and engineers but it is outdated. Working on PMF is like a simulation of the world of work, where the teams are much more multidisciplinary than during our studies, where your work has an effect on that of others and vice versa: and rivalries are overcome, you have to learn to trust others. Those who join PMF also do so becausethey want to add meaning to their university careers, contribute to something and go away with a unique experienceIt has been like that for me. You really become part of something, you are not just a number.”  

“We gave ourselves a pyramid structure from an organisational point of view, in order to avoid sending parts into production that do not work, but everyone contributes. The glue that holds the team together is the motorcycleit’s a product of such complexity... and we created it. In the two years of preparation for the competition, working on the prototype, what was just a group of students becomes almost a family. The biggest change happens at the point where the largest components are manufactured, the motorbike is assembled and the work moves from CAD to the workshop.”  

Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF

Champions of the world

PMF took its first motorbike to competition in 2016, just 8 months after the beginning of the project. They affectionately called it “la Cinghiala” (“the Sow”), because of its weight. The aim was to finish the race (which, as we will see later on, is not always a given). Given their early successes, the team worked with great ambition on a new prototype over the following two years: the Scighera (meaning fog in Milanese dialect), which was driven in the 2018 competition by Luca Campaci, a young rider and student of Mechanical Engineering, became the champion of the world in the Petrol category with a top speed of 197.1km/h.  

“The Scighera did some amazing things, it was a magical moment. It wasn’t 100% reliable, but on the day of the competition everything was perfect and, what’s more, that year we also won the fairing removal competition with such speed that students from the other universities were stunned. We returned victorious from Spain, with two cups and a list of accoladesincluding, in addition to first place overall, Best Design, Best Innovation, Business Plan, Best Acceleration (6,966”/150m) and 2nd Best Mechanical Test.” With this pedigree, PMF began working towards the 2020 edition (which became 2021 due to the pandemic) and decided to take two prototypes this time, one in the Petrol Category (with the Sciura - Milanese dialect for Signora - a fine-tuned version of the Scighera) and also in the Electric category for the first time in the team’s history, with the prototype Nyx (named after the Greek goddess of the night).  

Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF

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.The unexpected lies in wait

Each team receives a motor (a Ktm 250cc 4t), a set of slicks and a brake system (calipers and brake pumps) from the MotoStudent organisation for each prototype. The rest of the motorcycle is the team’s responsibility, which can choose whether to buy the parts or produce them in house, within the limits of the event’s official regulations. PMF prefers to produce them in house. "It’s difficult to design a motorbike from scratch because its performance depends greatly on the interaction between the various partsfinding the right balance so that everything works as it should is black magic,” explained Azul. “The pandemic hit us like an avalanche. In December 2020 we had to deliver certain parts of the bike for the 2021 competition, but there couldn’t be more than 3 people in the garage at a time. Until the last, we didn't know whether we would make it in time, but we managed it and by working 6 days a week with shifts of longer than 12 hours, we were able to develop very sound motorbikes.”  

Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF

But the spirit of MotoStudent is about craftmanship, motorbikes are unpredictable and things don't always go to plan. “Nyx, in the Electric category, had performed really well in the tests. Luca (our loyal rider) had managed to pull off rocket-fast times. However, , during the last lap of the race, the motor cut out several hundred metres from the finish line. Time was about to run out and the referees were approaching in order to help the rider move the motorbike off the circuit, but he brushed them off and heroically pushed the bike to the finish line for the sake of qualifying. It was 40 degrees, in July, in Aragón, and he was dressed to the nines in his racing suit. That’s what it means to belong to PMF. Thanks to him, we could compete, although Nyx unfortunately continued to cause reliability problems and we finished near the bottom. We still celebrated a lot in any case: not only because we had managed to finish the competition (for our first time in the electric category, it wasn't a bad result at all), but also because the atmosphere in those moments is so exciting and tense that when you finish, your emotions explode”.  

The team were counting on the Sciura in the Petrol category, remembering the victory with the Scighera. “We had a superbike rider for the Sciura. As a professional, he expected a certain pace and we struggled to keep up with him.” Almost all of the parts for the Sciura had been built by the team and the bike was performing brilliantly. “We had become really quick, we felt like drones with a hive mind. Ready for anything. But we had_lots of problems, beginning with the motor which broke on the eve of the competition (we had pushed too hard and, let’s be honest, the Ktm isn’t a great motor). We bent over backwards to replace it, because in Europe they aren’t easy to find. We reinstalled it overnight, working until 6 in the morning. It isn't easy: you have to remove the bike from the motor, not the other way around, because the motor is the heaviest part. And, once it is installed, you have a motor that you don't know, which has to be run in. At that point we decided to be thorough and change the fuel pump, replacing the one we had made with a professionally manufactured pump that we bought, in order to ensure greater reliability. It was a terrible mistake: when it comes to motorbikes, you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. Anyway, during qualification the pump let us down, the motor cut out and wouldn’t start again. For this, we were disqualified. It was a real shame, all we needed was to change the pump, but rules are rules.” Upon their return from Aragón, the students of PMF rolled up their sleeves ahead of the 2023 competition. It will be Azul’s last year, who in the meantime will graduate. “I’ll stay until the competition, for sure. PMF means to give everythingto build a team that becomes a family and lead it to do amazing things.”  

Polimi Motorcycle Factory
Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF