"La “Collina degli studenti”(Students' Hill) has been inaugurated at the Bovisa-La Masa Campus of the Politecnico di Milano: 1,900 square metres of indoor surface area and 2,200 square metres of terraces and green areas dedicated to students, faculty and laboratories.
"La Collina degli studenti" is part of “Vivipolimi“, a strategic project to upgrade the quality of work, research and teaching spaces at the Politecnico di Milano bringing them in line with international standards, involving professors, researchers and research assistants in developing projects.
Credits: Marco Introini
The first floor of the building is entirely dedicated to students: it consists of a study room with 70 wired workstations, a canteen and three meeting rooms.
On the upper floor, there is the faculty’s space, dedicated to the community, with areas for informal meetings, leisure and group work, in addition to a wired meeting room and touchscreen devices for experimenting with new ways of working together.
At the top of the building, the open-air terrace , a valuable multifunctional space suitable for organising events.
At the building base, hidden by the orography of the terrain, there is the Cable Dynamics Lab of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
It is still in its infancy and Italy plays a fundamental role: both because the leading team is from the Politecnico di Milano; and because the cars used, modified for autonomous driving, the same for all teams, are Dallara AV-21, made by the famous car manufacturer founded by Politecnico Alumnus Gianpaolo Dallara. The peculiarity of this championship, featuring the best research teams in the world, is that the cars race without a driver: they are driven by an artificial intelligence.
Courtesy from Polimove
FROM INDY AUTONOMOUS CHALLENGE TO WORLD RECORD
PoliMOVE, the team of researchers from the Polytechnic and led by Prof. Sergio Savaresi, has created the best artificial racing driver in the world. They call it As.car.i.
On 27 April, PoliMOVE took As.Car.i to the Space Shuttle landing strip at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, where there are no holds barred and the Dallara whizzes by at full speed, taking the world record for a fully autonomous car on a straight, with 309.3 km/h..
The Politecnico Team had already achieved the record on 26 April, but decided to raise the bar and seize the opportunity to improve its performance even further. On 27 April, As.car.i beat its own record to reach an incredible speed of 309.3 km/h, smashing through the “wall” of 300 km/h set as the target. The speed of 309.3 km/h was obtained as an average over 1 km in two consecutive attempts in opposite directions (to eliminate the effects of the wind), with a top speed of 311.9 km/h. “309.3 kmph = 192.2 mph (two-ways average, average over 1 km); 310.4 kmph = 192.8 mph (two-ways average, average over 100 m); 311.9 kmph = 193.8 mph (top speed). The previous record was held by Roborace since 2019 (282.4 kmph = 175.5 mph, two-ways average, average over 100 m)”, explains Savaresi.
In the next few days, our racing car will try to replicate the feat on the Atlanta track, in a more technical circuit that alternates straights and bends. Follow our updates on Facebook and Linkedin.
The Politecnico di Milano is included for the first time this year in "THE Impact Rankings 2022", created by Times Higher Education (THE), which assesses university performance in relation to sustainable development, measured on the basis of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Despite this being our first participation, the results achieved are very good: third place in Italy and among the top 100 in the world. A total of 1,406 universities are included in the rankings, including 20 in Italy.
The applied methodology requires that each university independently select a minimum of 4 sustainable development goals against which it wishes to be assessed, with the only compulsory goal being SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals.
The rankings measure research performance and teaching on topics related to the SDGs, the responsible management of university resources by staff, professors and students, the active engagement of national stakeholders on the basis of both quantitative indicators (citations, publications etc.) and information on the programmes launched by the universities.
The Politecnico di Milano achieved its best result, 18th in the world, in SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; a result that testifies to the level of excellence reached by the university’s laboratories, facilities of fundamental importance for supporting the innovative processes developed by researchers and industry.
The Politecnico was also ranked 45th in the world in relation to SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities and 59th for SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth.
Tens of thousands of square metres of poorly exploited land will become green spaces surrounding the gasometers, symbolic local landmarks. The gasometers will be converted into an innovation hub, a home for laboratories (such as the St Microelectronics clean rooms), startups (it is no coincidence that the hub will be the new home of Polihub, the Politecnico accelerator) and "a space dedicated to wellbeing and sport that will also be open to the public”, as as the Rector, Ferrucio Resta, declared last year in an interview published by La Repubblica..
Photo: blog.urbanfile.org
The urban redevelopment project for the for the future of the Bovisa-Goccia area is now ready to start: amongst other operations, it foresees investments of €100 million investment— €25 million from the Region and €75 million from the university—which will extend the Politecnico's presence in the Bovisa district where, as the rector explained, 20,000 students and five of the university’s 12 departments are based: “Universities now understand that, in addition to superior quality courses and research programmes, they also need to offer spaces and services,” he remarked at the press conference he attended on 12 April alongside the President of the Lombardy Region, Attilio Fontana, the Regional Councillor for the Development of the Metropolitan City, Stefano Bolognini, , and the City Councillor for Urban Regeneration, Gianfranco Tancredi.
The works will begin in 2022 and will be completed by the end of 2025:
“The Bovisa gasometers must become factories of ideas, knowledge and innovation that welcome #startups, businesses and students from across Italy and the world. Less than 12-15 months ago, it was just a dream; signing the agreement means that we are entering the phase of management and execution.”
The redevelopment of the district includes a new university area of 215,000 square metres of green space. The southern gasometer in particular—20,000 square metres on 7 levels—has been redesigned as the operational heart of a virtuous circle: “On the first three floors, there will be laboratories for microelectronics and artificial intelligence sensors”, the rector continued. “The next three floors will instead be home to Polihub, our startup incubator: today we have 120 startups but we aim to double that number. The top floor will host businesses in order to create an ecosystem of innovation for those who want to develop in partnership with the Politecnico di Milano.”
Today, the businesses already confirmed include: Stmicroelectronics, A2A, Lendlease, Eni (read more in Il Corriere).
There are two guidelines: " Technology as a tool and sustainability as the goal,” confirming the university’s commitment to playing its part in the transformation of the city and understanding the needs of new generations: “in this context, the wellbeing and quality of the spaces is fundamental,” as is the proximity to an important research and innovation hub such as the Politecnico di Milano: “The two gasometers will be extraordinary vessels for some of the driving functions for the world of innovation, entrepreneurship, training, wellbeing and culture with the aim of promoting the growth of a district of knowledge and innovation that starts with the university and extends to the community. A concrete response towards sustainable and inclusive development", concluded Ferruccio Resta.
The first Italian Laurea Magistrale (equivalent to Master of Science) degree programme in High Performance Computing Engineering has been launched at the Politecnico di Milano. It is dedicated to high performance computing and its many applications in a number of scientific and technological domains.
The programme, which will start in autumn 2022 and will be taught in English, has a strong interdisciplinary approach, with the aim of training engineers with extensive knowledge of the main technologies and architectures for supercomputing, quantum computing and mathematical and statistical modelling of complex problems.
“Supercomputing, quantumcomputing, mathematical-statistical modelling of complex problems: contexts in which new professionals capable of tackling highly complex issues are increasingly in demand. The ability to process large amounts of data allows us to define new scenarios, run simulations, and develop new models, as is the case, for example, in the medical field. There are many areas where HPC can make a difference. Therefore, new skills and expertise are needed. The Politecnico di Milano is looking ahead and from next autumn will welcome students to the new Master of Science in High Performance Computing Engineering."
The Politecnico's aim is to train multidisciplinary ’high performance computing engineers, who are completely new to the Italian scene, although some have been trained internationally but still lack the interdisciplinary skills essential for designing supercomputing applications.
With the launch of the new Laurea Magistrale in High Performance Computing Engineering, the Politecnico di Milano has risen to this challenge and aims to fill this gap by training professionals capable of combining the most advanced knowledge of computer engineering, including quantum computing, with the skills of applied mathematical, statistical and physical sciences to address and solve emerging complex problems.
For this reason, the curriculum has been developed to create highly specialized individuals capable of tackling extremely complex practical problems, from energy sustainability to climatology, from genomics to medicine and pharmacology, from chemistry to finance, and from computational biomechanics to aerospace.
Supercomputing offers a decisive competitive advantage in developing new applications, thanks to powerful simulation tools and parallel computing on high-performance hardware, which makes it possible to dramatically accelerate the analysis of large amounts of data, as well as the execution of increasingly complex and sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms.
Support students: with a donation starting from €10 you can help fund scholarships:. Give now.
The White Paper SSD – Smart Sustainable Districts has been published: the project, promoted by Politecnico di Milano and coordinated byConsorzio Poliedra, aims to suggest actions for thesustainable development, the ecologic transition, and the resilience of places and communities at a local scale, by defining a series of paths, actions and tools to deal with urban transformations at a local scale, considering sustainable and smart solutions.
Credits: https://www.poliedra.polimi.it/ssd/
The White Paper drafts some practical guidelines to deal with the difference phases of urban transformation during processes of regeneration and ecological transition. It puts together technical-scientific approaches together with humanistic-social ones, proposing methods and solutions that works together at a different scale, considering material and immaterial assets and suggesting how to direct urban regeneration processes, coordinating different plans, proposing integrated tools to fulfil aggregated positive effects.
SSD - Smart Sustainable Districts project started in 2021, involving more than 100 researchers from all the departments and consortium of the University ( Polimi SystemIn particular, it speaks to local authorities and all the different figures active in urban and districts regeneration. The project is one of the research activities that the Politecnico di Milano undertakes to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development and, in particular, is among the activites related to the Sustainable Development Goal number 11 of the UN 2030 Agenda: "Sustainable Cities and Communities”.
Engineering and emotions: they are seemingly two worlds that cannot meet, but not for Lucia Chierchia. Interviewed by Il Sole24oreChierchia - Alumna in mechanical engineering in 1999 - describes the passion that drove her to pursue the engineering career that has accompanied her since she was a child:
“You get excited about something beautiful that makes you feel good, that creates value. Sometimes there seems to be a dichotomy between the whole world of art, for example, a world that is pure emotion, and engineering. Instead, during my studies and my career, I felt the same emotions that you feel about a work of art ".
““The passion, the enthusiasm, the intuition that “that is the way for us” is something that comes from our history. In high school I did classical studies, already knowing, however, that I would study engineering: it was my dream since I was a child. That's why my mother called me Grisù like the friendly little dragon [protagonist of a 1970s Italian animated cartoon] who dreamed of being a firefighter, because I kept repeating: «When I grow up, I'll be an engineer!» ”.
After graduating from the Politec nico di Milano, the Alumna started working in the aerospace sector, and then held managerial roles in Whirpool and Electrolux. Today she is a market ambassador & open innovation ecosystems lead in Gellify, the B2B innovation platform that invests directly in startups and scaleups, accompanying them in entering the market. The goal is to put them in contact with companies with the will to innovate, which help them validate their technological solution, implementing it in mature industrial contexts.
For Chierchia in particular digital innovation requires creativity, a characteristic that is often "very strong in female profiles". In fact, companies are increasingly looking for women who “are prone to empathy and interpersonal skills that allow them to move even in constantly evolving contexts, as well as to learn quickly”.
Credits: https://www.gellify.com/it/
However, it is here in the workplace (and especially in Italy) that women often struggle to make a career in the STEM environment: "there are still too few". This is a reality that unfortunately also exists in young working environments like startups, the Alumna underlined in the interview, where backwardness is also found in young executives.
It is fundamental, she argues, to ensure that change also moves through the men. It is they who, together with the women who are already implementing change, must not be silent on the subject. “The problem is not only with young women but also men: if it becomes a challenge only for the women we will never make it. In some contexts I have seen colleagues who took a stand, that's what makes the difference, not keeping quiet. I've never been silent, everyone should do it".
But how do we encourage girls to follow their STEM inclinations?
“Girls are already in love with STEM subjects. We need to listen to these emotions. But they lack support. Numbers are important for awareness, but the real problem in some contexts is something else: women in some cases are not supported making their choice. If you feel strange doing engineering there is something wrong with your family, not with you ”.
The numbers in fact speak for themselves: girls who choose STEM courses at university represent only 18% of the total, while at the Politecnico di Milano this rises to 23.6% for three-year degrees and 27.3% for master's degrees (source: Gender balance 2021).
Even today, unfortunately, technical professions such as engineering are considered a "natural habitat" for men and an achievement for women - as the Vice Rector Sciuto also states in the book Alumnae - Ingegnere e Tecnologie -. Often, embarking on an engineering career requires girls to be extra motivated due to assumed prejudices and models imposed by a conformist society.
The university support system is, in this context, fundamental: for this reason the Politecnico di Milano has created the Girls@Polimi, which, for the entire three-year course, will support girls who choose to study Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, attending courses with a low female presence (Aerospace, Automation, Electrical, Electronic, IT, Mechanical and Industrial Production Engineering).
Women who study STEM subjects and create startups are, in fact, still forced to answer questions on how to reconcile family and career, the Alumna continued in the interview. The problem, therefore, also exists for those professionals who decide to invest in their ideas by creating a new business. Chierchia’s examples are concrete: for her there are 2 reasons behind the still difficult presence of women in this world:: "The first obstacle is the STEM environment, the second is the chauvinism of the investment world" concluded the engineer.
The solution? Encourage girls to study and wait: “change can and must pass through to the new generations”.
By supporting the GIRLS @ POLIMI project you can contribute together with other donors to create scholarships to support girls enrolling in engineering degree courses with low female attendance. Donate now .
We are in the B12 building of the Politecnico, in the heart of the Bovisa campus. I am meeting Professor Amalia Ercoli Finzi on the second floor. The building is a maze: in fact I got lost, she had to guide me there with her mobile phone, as if I were a probe that had gone off course. She is a petite lady with an elegant, kind and curious manner. She is also one of Italy’s leading scientists. And yet, one of the first topics we address is fantasy.
Credits: www.deabyday.tv
“We work with the imagination to be able to understand what we want to do - she begins - the first step is to imagine this different world on which we want to go, imagine a galaxy so far away that we can say that we are close to the Big Bang. This is not an imagination for its own sake, which fantasizes about things that are impossible to achieve; I'm talking about a reasoned fantasy that serves to identify goals and aspirations. After which, we need to find the tools to put it into practice”.
How did you imagine Carousel, the system you assembled on Rosetta? I ask, and she smiles as her eyes light up with enthusiasm. "We had to deposit the samples taken from the comet into a series of ovens and we had two options: either we moved the sample or we moved the ovens. Moving the sample meant moving the drill, but the drill was attached to the Lander. Turning the whole Lander is a very complicated business. So, we worked on fantasy. The solution was to hold the drill still and make the ovens rotate under it. This way when the drill found the right oven, the sample was deposited. We performed these rotation operations with errors of tenths of a minute of arc. It was very satisfying".
Yet it is impossible to imagine all possible scenarios. “True. We didn't think about putting a deployment sensor on the sampling tube. Our drill is fitted with a tube that is ejected and inserted inside the cavity to collect the material. I did endless tests in the laboratory and can almost hear the "click" it makes when it comes out. It always worked in all the tests and we trusted it, instead we should have added a sensor that told us if it had deployed correctly or not. The other thing we didn't put in was a ground contact sensor. We do not know exactly when the contact takes place: we can reconstruct it through the forces that are exerted, especially through the dynamics, because by imposing a rotation and transaction speed, if these vary it is clear that contact with the ground has occurred. But having a sensor would have been good".
Next time there will be a sensor. By the way, what did Rosetta teach us, what will we need for the next times? "Landing on an asteroid also serves to demonstrate something important: with a very small, really very small propeller, capable of transmitting a fraction of a centimetre per second of speed, it is possible to deflect the asteroid! This could protect us from a possible impact: if we act early enough, let's say twenty years before the expected impact with the Earth, it is enough to change its course. Because it has travelled a lot in twenty years, and the drift takes it away from our planet".
I am heartened to know that if we were on a collision course with an asteroid we would not have to send Bruce Willis onto it, but I don't know if I should tell the Professor. Instead, I ask her what the fundamental components for a mission in space are. "First the ideas, second the people who bring the ideas to life, third the money. That is: the pure contribution of the brain, the contribution of human capacity and then the money to put everything into practice. And I confess that on the economic question I envy the Chinese a little, who decide one thing and do it. We are doing well in Europe, we are good, but we are a little bit quarrelsome and a little nationalist. I believe in Europe, I have always believed in it, also because I was there when the Treaties of Rome were signed. I recently told the European Community that we scientists had thought of a Europe of collaboration, a Europe in which the strongest nation helps the others. That was the concept:the dissemination of knowledge based on collaboration. There is no way like working together to teach others and learn ourselves. Because you learn a lot even from ignorance. Now in Europe things are not quite like that".
Learning from ignorance? "You wouldn’t believe how many things I have learned from the mistakes of my students! Thanks to them, I saw sides of the same topic that I had never tackled from that perspective brought to light. I always say that, there are two cases behind a great invention: either you know everything, and therefore you get there because you have this deep-rooted knowledge, or you don't know anything about it and you throw yourself into it".
So, are we going to Mars? It's a bit of a forbidden dream, right? “Yes. More than half of the missions to Mars, two thirds I believe, have failed. Mars is difficult to reach (so much so that, when they reach it, then they remain there), but it is the only possibility we have to explore a planet where there has been life and where we could bring life back. It can be done.
The five projects selected by the Polisocial Award 2021will be launched in the coming months,on the theme“Equità e Ripresa”. The health emergency has exacerbated social imbalances and exclusion and rendered the increase in inequality a concrete possibility. The funded projects will act from a perspective of economic, social and cultural recovery, promoting the development of methods, strategies, tools and technologies aimed at reducing inequalities and facilitating access to resources and opportunities by particularly vulnerable people, social groups or communities.
SOSpesa: neighbourhood networks for the recovery, distribution and recycling of food surplus
Departments: DESIGN, DIG, DEIB Tag: recupero alimentare, contrasto alla povertà, reti di quartiere Location: NoLo district, Milan
In agreement with the association fabric of the NoLo district in Milan, the project aims to create a network of supportive local actors who, by mapping food flows, will offer food products at regulated prices, recover surplus food and transform unsold goods to help vulnerable groups.
RESTARTHealth: Renewable Energy Systems To Activate Recovery Through the Health sector
The project aims to strengthen the health and community services infrastructures in sub-Saharan Africa by studying efficient electricity management for hybrid micro-grids. Tests and demo applications in a hospital and three health centres in Uganda will produce general guidelines.
EQUI_06: equity and quality for children. Guidelines for implementing the integrated system 0-6 years
Starting from a pilot study, which will help to explore the complex framework of needs and resources relating to early childhood, the research seeks to define guidelines for the creation of integrated territorial hubs of “0-6” pre-school services. The focus is on urban areas, in particular the areas at greatest risk of social exclusion and educational poverty.
coWIN: win-win cooperation building sites for the redevelopment of properties seized from the mafia
Pilot experiments for the development of an innovative “hub and spoke” model for the recovery and redevelopment of properties seized from members of organised crime. The aim is to spark social regeneration based on the technical training and employment integration of vulnerable groups, leaving tangible signs of equity and legality.
It addresses the needs of visually impaired people affected by the COVID-19 lockdowns and the restrictions imposed on the daily use of spaces and services, and more. How do we make them fully accessible so that visually impaired people can use them independently and safely? The integrated approach involves inclusive design, robotics, Automation and Architecture. The researchers predict a strong impact on wayfinding applications in medical and care facilities, shopping centres, cultural centres (e.g. museums) and sports centres. In particular, the E4sport laboratory will support the the implementation of the Budd-e project in the Giuriati sports centre to help blind and partially-sighted users during sports activities, such as running.
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