Author: admin
Alumnus Massimo Roj designs a high-tech cabin at an altitude of 3400 meters
On the Rutor glacier, winds blow at 290 kilometers per hour and temperatures drop to 40 degrees below zero. Building a cabin here is a real architectural challenge that Massimo Roj , graduated from Politecnico in architecture in 1986, dedicated to Edoardo Camardella, his friend and mountain guide, who in 2019 lost his life on Mont Blanc.
“Architecture that becomes memory, courage, emotion and strength: this, and much more, is the meaning of the cabin project dedicated to our friend Edoardo Camardella, a young mountain guide and ski instructor who died 2 years ago, victim of an avalanche on Mont Blanc - writes Roj on his Linkedin profile - The cabin will be placed on the Rutor Glacier in La Thuile (AO), at 3400 meters high, and will be visible in La Thuile this winter before being transported to the top in June 2022.
A demanding and challenging project, in which we have put heart and soul and that we have carried forward thanks to the contribution of great companies in engineering and construction , which like us have believed in the importance of this work. "
The steel cabin, built by Progetto CMR under the guidance of Roj, will be mounted in November on the stage in the La Thuile cable car square at the beginning of the ski season where it will remain on display for throughout the winter, before its actual installation at high altitude, scheduled for May-June 2022.
It is a self-sufficient last generation structure in terms of energy, with photovoltaic panels inserted into the external steel sheets, which protect the insulation with the wood facing inwards. one of the highest weather stations in Europe will also be built here, powered by a group of batteries that will operate the camera that will communicate directly with the Aosta base.
THE WIND TUNNEL TESTS
The cabin is a state-of-the-art structure that needed studies, surveys and measurements to be built, which are essential to make these technologies work at such a high altitude.
Politecnico di Milano also contributed to these design studies, making available the Wind Tunnel for measurements on static and thermal engineering and resistance to extreme technological phenomena .
“It was necessary to understand how to have a light but resistant structure and how to mount the panels without the risk of them being uprooted by the wind, giving shelter to those who frequent the mountains in a modern structure” Roj comments on Corriere della Sera.
SISCODE: co-design processes in the field of social and scientific innovation
Double silver for Politecnico Alumna Federica Fragapane
The award ceremony of the Hublot Design Prize 2021, held on 17 October, concluded the first edition of the prestigious award to be held live since back in 2019. In London’s Serpentine Galleries, 160 international experts and gallery owners met to present works by emerging and established artists from all over the world.
One of the award winners was our very own Federica Fragapane, Communication Design Alumna 2014, for her data visualization work representing the complexity of data in organic and poetic forms, “engaging and experimental visual works that attract and involve the beholder”, according to La Repubblica.
Fragapane received one of the two Pierre Keller Awards up for grabs, sharing the podium with German designer Eva Feldkamp. First place went to Mohammed Iman Fayaz, 30 years old, illustrator, designer and contemporary artist from Brooklyn, New York.
This year in its sixth edition, the Hublot Design prize is the most important and conspicuous accolade in the design sector, conceived to support young talents and promoted by watchmaker Hublot. Hailed by many designers as an excellent career accelerator and springboard, the award not only recognises a single design but the artist’s entire pathway of research and experimentation, as Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO of Hublot states: “to pass from the shadow to the light, from object to famous piece, from promising newcomer to household name, triggering factors are required and one of these is the Hublot Design Prize”.
“As a proud Alumna of the Politecnico di Milano, I am delighted to personally notify you that my work has been selected to receive the Pierre Keller Award in London, Fragapane wrote to the editors of Alumni. “I had the honour of presenting my designs to a judging panel composed of Marva Griffin Wilshire, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Alice Rawsthorn and the Formafantasma studio”.
The Hublot Design Prize awards are assigned by an independent judging panel that proposes the candidates and by a quality committee, this year formed by none other than Marva Griffin Wilshire, creator and curator of SaloneSatellite, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Gallery in London which hosts the event every year, British critic Alice Rawsthorn and the duo of Italian designers Formafantasma, who won the award in 2018.
2021 is the year of the silver medal for Fragapane, who also took home second place in June at the European Design Awards. She won this first silver for her column “Dati visivi” (Visual data), published weekly in “La Lettura”, the cultural supplement of the Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera”, which speaks about her here.
LAMPO enhances the ability to forecast thunderstorms
Earthshot Prize awarded to Milan and the neighborhood hubs made in Polimi
The City of Milan won the first edition of the international prize Earthshot Prize, with strong> neighborhood hubs project against food waste in the “Build a Waste Free World" category.
The Earthshot Prize, conceived and financed by the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, was created to reward the most effective actions aimed at protecting the environment and provides for the award of 1 million of pounds (1.17 million euros) to each of the winners of the five categories and the support of the Royal Foundation for the coming years.
“Milan is the first major city to apply a policy against food waste at the city level that includes public bodies, food banks, charities, NGOs, universities and private companies. And it's working - as it is reported in Corriere della Sera on the reason behind the award -. Today the city has three Food Waste Hubs, each of which recovers about 130 tons of food per year or 350 kg per day, equivalent to about 260,000 meals".
MILANO “ZERO WASTE” SINCE 2017
The project - which was chosen among other 750 candidate initiatives around the world - was created in 2017 from an alliance between the Municipality of Milan, Politecnico di Milano with the research group of the Department of Engineering Management Food Sustainability Lab which includes the Food Sustainability Observatory, Assolombarda, Fondazione Cariplo and the QuBì Program.
The creation of the first Hub involved the Lombardy Food Bank, allowing the distribution of meals to 3,800 people in a year, thanks to the contribution of 20 supermarkets, 4 company canteens and 24 third sector entities. Today in Milan there are 3 neighborhood hubs in Isola (2019), Lambrate (2020) and Gallaratese (2021) .
"Winning the Earthshot prize is the recognition of a great team effort that involved the whole city - comments Palazzo Marino -: thanks to the Municipality and to many realities of the third sector, universities, large-scale distribution and philanthropy operating in the area ".
The £ 1 million prize from the Royal Foundation will be invested in the opening of new hubs in the area , guaranteeing their long-term sustainability and replicability in the network of cities that work with Milan on the food policy .
Find out all about frontier research at Politecnico and on the topics defined by the European Commission as part of the Recovery Plan. Visit the Next Generation EU website of the Politecnico di Milano .
Credits home: www.foodpolicymilano.org/
Credits header: @earthshotprize su Twitter
A new polimi study makes the cover of Catalysis Science and Technology
Indy Autonomous Challenge: Polimove misses gold by a whisker
The first edition of the ' Indy Autonomous Challenge Powered by Cisco (IAC) , the first unmanned car speed championship at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway .
The intense competition, which lasted over 6 months between tests and qualifications races, saw the best universities in the world programming Dallara IL-15 racing cars, modified for autonomous driving.
On the Indianapolis track competed 28 teams of over 500 university students from 39 universities in 11 countries. Representing Italy the PoliMOVE team, led by prof. Sergio Savaresi: one of the leading international research groups in the field of automotive control, intelligent vehicles and smart mobility.
A INCH FROM THE FINISH LINE
The final competition on October 23rd ended on a bittersweet note for our team, leaving Indianapolis too early: after having dominated the last months of the qualifiers the car crashed into the guard rail .
“The connection between two very important control units disconnected”, said Professor Savaresi, “the engine control unit and the one that controlled the steering and brakes. We couldn't do anything”.
The group, made up of undergraduates and PhD students from Politecnico, played all their cards during the final, exploring the limits of the machine and risking more speed than all the other teams.
A strategy that betrayed them one step away from the finish line, but not without glory: the breakdown occurred right at the moment when PoliMOVE set the speed record of the championship.
“252 km/h , with the engine going at 6000 rpm: we broke the record and crashed 10 seconds later. But… racing is racing ”, continues Savaresi,“ and these cars are still very unreliable prototypes. We have always been among the fastest, in the race we pushed to the limit, being the first to explore the strength limits of the car ”.
We have tested that these cars are not yet robust enough. The TUM Autonomous Motorsport of the Technische Universität of Munich took first place. In the winning team, however, there was a piece of Politecnico: the competing car, the same for all the teams (except in the autonomous driving software), is a Dallara EXP, designed by the Dallara Group and its founder, Alumnus Giampaolo Dallara.
TOWARDS THE WORLD RECORD
The event met with great media and public success: thousands of attendees and over 20,000 viewers on the live stream, as well as 350 high school STEM students representing over 50 urban, rural and suburban school districts across Indiana.
"For our students however, it was an intense, beautiful and very formative experience", continues Savaresi. "They faced for months, on the field, a racing approach , extremely focused on the goal. It is a context in which the times are very rigidly marked. During the tests you have to be ready at the right time and everything has to work. The group has become very close-knit, has developed a concrete working method and great discipline in managing pressure”.
And now? The experience has finished?
“No, we will continue to work on the software and on the machine”, answers Savaresi, who concludes: “it is not yet official, but we will almost certainly try to make up for it in a overtaking race in Las Vegas, on January 7, during CES 2022 . Furthermore, we are one step away from the world record for speed in autonomous driving, which today is 282 km/h, held since 2019 by a Roborace machine . We are looking for a track to break this record . And the success of the first edition of the IAC suggests that there could be a second in 2022".
If the chance is presented, we will all be rooting for Politecnico!
You can support this project with a donation.Give now
Eni Award: The President of the Italian Republic awards two Alumnae of Politecnico
Monica Ferro and Greta Colombo Dugoni, Alumnae and researchers of the Politecnico di Milano, were awarded at the Palazzo del Quirinale in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella on the occasion of the XIII edition of Eni Award, the scientific research award of Eni , with the special mention "Eni Joule for Entrepreneurship".
The award, also known as the "Nobel of Energy" , is considered an international reference point for research in the fields of energy and the environment.
Starting from this year Eni, through its Joule School for Entrepreneurship , has established an even further recognition for teams, university spin-offs and startups aimed at promoting the application, enhancement and technology transfer, while promoting the creation of a sustainable innovation ecosystem.
BI-REX: A NEW LIFE FOR AGRO-FOOD WASTE
Alumnae Ferro and Colombo Dugoni received the award for the activity they carried out in the startup Bi-Rex , of which they are founders, developing a green process for the production of biopolymers, to give new life to agro-food waste. The project is concerned with enhancing biomass to obtain products with high added value such as cellulose, chitin and lignin in an eco-sustainable way.
"These scraps are usually burned, but we - explain the researchers to Affaritaliani.it - we want to give them a new life. In chemistry these substances are included in biomass and by recovering them, the costs for their incineration are also avoided. In addition, cellulose can also be extracted from the processing residues of bioplastics , bags for the collection of wet waste so to speak. "
The Alumnae have already brought Bi-Rex to four patents and the winning of important loans : the grant of 30,000 euros from Switch2Product, the acceleration path in PoliHub - Innovation Park & Startup Accelerator and 160,000 euros from the fund di investments Poli360, an investment fund managed by 360 Capital Partners.
Find out all about frontier research at Politecnico and on the topics defined by the European Commission as part of the Recovery Plan. Visit the Next Generation EU website of the Politecnico di Milano .
LIGHT-CAP: a new concept for solar batteries from the Poli
Developing the prototype for a new device capable of absorbing, converting and storing solar energy sustainably and with low production costs: this is the ambitious objective that has brought together research centres from around the world, coordinated by the Italian Institute of Technology. This is LIGHT-CAP, a four-year research project which has received €3.18 million in funding from the European Union as part of the Horizon 2020 programme.
THE PROBLEMS WITH SOLAR ENERGY
The traditional methods of converting and storing solar energy are largely based on silicon solar panels and large, cumbersome batteries. Moreover, there is an undeniable issue linked to the supply of the materials required to construct these components.
With LIGHT-CAP, the researchers involved are seeking to develop a new structure based on nanotechnologies which is capable of combining the two functions - conversion and storage - into a single versatile, portable device manufactured using environmentally-friendly, easily-obtainable materials (such as minerals found in the earth’s crust) in order to avoid the critical issues related to the supply of traditional materials.
SIMPLE, HIGH-QUALITY INGREDIENTS
A combination of carbon-based nanoparticles (such as graphene) composed of a few types of metal oxides (indium, zinc and tin) normally used in electronic components for mobile phones, displays and LEDs: materials with excellent energy storage capabilities and long-term stability, allowing them to be charged and discharged many times over before reaching the end of their working life
A device with these characteristics would represent an efficient solution for not only absorbing solar energy, but also converting, storing and releasing it in a controlled way as electrical energy, potentially with a significant impact, especially in the field of mobile electronics.
The project’s innovative ideas were successful in the Horizon 2020 European call for proposals for “Breakthrough zero-emissions energy storage and conversion technologies for climate-neutrality” as part of the “FET Proactive: Emerging Paradigms and Communities” programme.
HOW WILL IT WORK?
The researchers are working on designing a prototype which could even be ready by the end of the four-year project. It is a device similar to a battery capable of being recharged using light, which would then store the energy to be used later on in order to power a piece of portable equipment.
To do this today, it takes two devices: a photovoltaic cell and a battery. LIGHT-CAP will be able to do both things. The mechanism that underpins the project is the separation of positive and negative charges after light irradiation on interfacing between two nanomaterials, one made up of nanoparticles measuring just a few nanometres, the other as fine as one or a few atoms like graphene.
THE ROLE OF POLITECNICO
The university will be tasked with combing through and studying the optical properties of the nanomaterials produced, using ultrafast continuous spectroscopy (up to a time resolution of just a few femtoseconds): techniques in which the Politecnico is a world-leading organisation (as previously discussed in the context of TOMATTO, the €12 million EU project aimed at observing what happens to molecules in the moments immediately following their interaction with light).
The fundamental interactions between the different types of nanomaterials in liquid-liquid, liquid-solid, and solid-solid interfaces will also be studied. The experimental measurements will be corroborated by a variety of theoretical models. The Politecnico di Milano will also coordinate the project’s second Work Package, which focuses on the optical characterisation, optoelectronic characterisation and electrical characterisation of the new nanomaterials and new interfaces and heterojunctions.
Find out all about frontier research at Politecnico and on the topics defined by the European Commission as part of the Recovery Plan. Visit the Next Generation EU website of the Politecnico di Milano .
Credits home/header: polimi.it
Safer, beautiful and sustainable roads: the JAMES DYSON AWARD given to three students of Politecnico
A team of three polimi students won the 2021 edition of James Dyson Award Italy, the international design award dedicated to young engineers and designers. The three Alumni of Politecnico stood out as the best young inventors among over 2,000 participants who presented their inventions from 28 countries.
Luca Grosso, Silvana Migliozzi and Alessio Puleo, the three master's students of Intregrated Product Design , won the award with the Roadfix project: a tool designed to repair damages to the road surface at no cost to the public budget . In fact, it would be the companies that economically bear the costs of the repairs. The idea is that Roadfix is able to offer advertising spaces to companies, which could imprint their logo on the "hole", once filled, and sponsor its repair, taking advantage of an aesthetic and commercial opportunity oriented towards social value.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Accidents due to poor road maintenance are the first cost item for municipalities. Pot holes are among the main causes of accidents, especially for micro-mobility. To date, the holes are repaired using cold or hot bitumen using a shovel to fill and level. These methods allow for makeshift repairs that have a very limited duration over time and give an unpleasant aesthetic result.
The idea of Roadfix was therefore created with the aim of improving road safety with more precise and safe repairs , simplifying the work of operators as well as opening new frontiers of marketing. An inspiration that comes from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, that is, repairing broken objects with gold to enhance the cracks and give them a new life. The concept is to improve road defects to make them resources for the city .
The tread will in fact become customizable: the sponsoring companies will be able to imprint a brand on the "patch" and will be able to insert graphics on the side parts of the machine itself , to have also vertical visibility during the repair of the road surface. With this new opportunity it will be possible to find companies willing to advertise by helping our cities.
The initial design concept was born during the Concept Design Laboratory of prof. Massimo Bianchini at the Politecnico. After an initial phase of research and development of ideas, it was developed with a study model and tested to understand its ergonomics, proportions and user experience.
The next step is to create a prototype equipped with electrical components for a road test phase , and have some operators try it out to understand in more detail issues related to ergonomics and user experience. Furthermore, companies operating in similar sectors have been identified to propose collaborations to the project.