Erik Franco – Pagina 10 – Progress in Research

Reducing atmospheric CO2 with ECCSELLENT project

Posted on 16/01/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The project “ECCSELLENT – Development of ECCSEL – R.I. ItaLian facilities: usEr access, services and loNg-Term sustainability” aims to strengthen Italian research facilities in the field of carbon dioxide capture, utilisation, transport and storage.

This is a particularly important topic with regard to the efforts to mitigate climate change: alongside improving energy efficiency and harnessing renewable energy sources, CCUS (CO₂ Capture, Utilisation and Storage) technologies have also been identified as a strategic measure with a view to reducing carbon emissions.

For three years, the ECCSELLENT project, which has been created as part of the European ECCSELL network, will be responsible for developing new technologies and research infrastructure in the field of CCUS, while simultaneously encouraging access to and enhancing the services and sustainability of the laboratories in the network that already operate within the CCUS sector, making it possible to reinforce scientific excellence and providing the national research system with the tools necessary to promote the decarbonisation of industry, one of society’s biggest challenges.

ECCSELLENT will be financed by 16.5 million euros from the Ministry of Universities and Research as part of NRRP Mission 4 “Education and Research” – Next Generation EU. The partners, coordinated by the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics – OGS, are the University of Bologna, the Politecnico di Milano (in partnership with LEAP, the research centre founded by the Politecnico di Milano which operates in the energy-environment sector), ENEA and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR).

Thanks to this important project, the Politecnico di Milano will be equipped with a mobile experimental system for carrying out applied research activity relating to CO₂ capture processes which are crucial for the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industry sectors,
Manuele Gatti and Matteo Carmelo Romano, professors at the Politecnico’s Department of Energy

MIT and Politecnico together for the Rocca Project

Posted on 23/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The project has come to life ‘Towards the Smart Villages of Italy’ funded by MIT – Italy Roberto Rocca Project-Politecnico di Milano.

MIT students and professors conducted ten days of fieldwork, travelling to some of the most economically disadvantaged and poorest areas of Europe in inland Sicily (Favara, Vizzini and Centuripe), exploring the role of cultural heritage, digitization and WFH as tools to promote new forms of sustainable development. From this perspective, the digital transition is an opportunity that cannot be missed. The class also compared similar conditions of marginalisation in the Alps (Valtellina, Tirano and Teglio). The students are now working on their final projects, focusing on certain topics, such as: spatial metrics of abandonment in Sicily, proposal for a regional WFH plan in Valtellina, digital awareness of small businesses, opportunities for Valtellina in view of the upcoming Winter Olympics and planning guidelines on tourism and food production in Sicily.

The project was developed by Prof. Giovanna Fossa (Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and Built Environment) together with Prof. Brent Ryan (MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning) who says:

It is the first time that MIT has organised an urban planning course in Italy on the subject of depopulation and widespread historical heritage. The students were exposed to new and unique situations that bear witness to the cultural richness of the Italian hinterland, but also to the fragility of an economically and demographically impoverished territory.

The research group of this MIT-Politecnico collaboration includes Carmelo Ignaccolo, researcher in urban planning at MIT, Cristina Boniotti, researcher in restoration at the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and Built Environment of the Politecnico di Milano, and Andrea Pimpinella, researcher in telecommunications at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano.

EspLORE: exploring properties of carbon-atom wires with application-oriented approach

Posted on 22/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Linear carbon atomic wires are one-dimensional carbon-based systems that are a subject of great interest, due to their special thermal, optical, electronic and mechanical properties, and therefore their possible applications in various fields.

The EspLORE project, coordinated by Prof. Carlo S. Casari of the Department of Energy at the Politecnico di Milano, and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with a Consolidator Grant, aims to develop innovative materials by exploiting the potential of carbon atomic wires, exploring their possible applications in advanced technologies within the energy sector.

As part of the project, research was carried out into the response of carbon chains to a particular UV light excitation, a type of light that these materials readily absorb. The vibrational response of the carbon chains and the influence that UV light had on their electronic properties was investigated using the IUVS Synchrotron Light Line equipment at the “Elettra” Synchrotron in Trieste.

The uniqueness of these carbon atomic wires and of the investigation technique used has allowed us to better understand their fundamental properties, providing a strong basis for their future applications in various fields.
Prof. Carlo S. Casari

The results of the study, carried out by Prof. Casari and the ESPLORE project team in collaboration with Professors Chiara Castiglioni and Matteo M. S. Tommasini of the FunMat Lab (Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” of the Politecnico di Milano) and Barbara Rossi of the “Elettra” Synchrotron in Trieste, were published in the prestigious international scientific journal Nature Communications in an article entitled “Electron-phonon coupling and vibrational properties of size-selected linear carbon chains by resonance Raman scattering”.

The structural simplicity of these atomic wires allows for an elegant and rigorous verification of one of the fundamental theories of resonant Raman spectroscopy, here applied for the first time to transitions involving multiple vibrational quanta.
Matteo Tommasini and Chiara Castiglioni

After 5 years of work, the EspLORE project has achieved its main goal: to explore the properties of carbon-atom wires with an application-oriented approach.

Here are other important results:

the PROTECHT project, which aims to exploit the results of EspLORE research for possible business opportunities, has received an ERC Proof of Concept Grant;
the ENIGMA project, an outcome of the EspLORE activity, has won the 2021 Switch2Product innovation challenge, the 2022 Startcup Lombardia and the special LIFTT award in the context of the 2022 National Innovation Award (PNI)

The EspLORE project website

New, crucial information on the validity of the Floquet Theory applied to very short light pulses

Posted on 21/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Floquet Theory, particularly important for the development of new concepts in electro-optics, is used to create time crystals and induce new properties in materials. A study published in Nature Communications presents new, crucial information on the validity of this theory when applied to very short light pulses.

Researchers in the Department of Physics at the Politecnico di Milano, in partnership with the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology (IFN-CNR), the University of Tsukaba (Japan) and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg (Germany), have discovered that a time crystal with unique properties can be induced even with very short pulses, lasting a few millionths of a billionth of a second, or femtoseconds.

The researchers managed to observe the creation of Floquet state of a free electron on this ultrashort time scale, thanks to experiments conducted at the Attosecond Research Center of the Department of Physics at the Politecnico di Milano as part of the ERC project AuDACE (Attosecond Dynamics in AdvanCed matErials). Using simulations based on advanced theoretical models, they demonstrated that the Floquet Theory can be extended to these regimes.

These are significant findings because the possibility to induce new properties in matter with ultrashort light paves the way to the realization of new devices, impossible to obtain with standard techniques.
Matteo Lucchini, professor from the Department of Physics and lead author of the study

Water wars: causes and possible solutions

Posted on 15/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The control of water resources, like oil today, could be the cause of wars in the world in the near future.

The prestigious journal Nature Sustainability has published a study conducted by a group of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano who investigated the phenomenon by analysing, in particular, the socio-hydrological characteristics of the numerous conflicts that have arisen in the last 20 years in the Lake Chad region, in central Africa.

The research showed how conflicts tend to be associated with specific and complex conditions, which in turn deal with the socio-economic value of water as a form of livelihood, especially in agriculture, and with the effects that human use of water has on the accessibility of this resource.
For a better understanding of these conflicts, the researchers argue, it is necessary to establish measures of water availability that take into account the importance of water for human sustenance and the mechanisms that are generated when a resource is used unequally.

Working in this way it’s possible to produce quantitative and qualitative descriptions of particular environmental “patterns” associated with specific conflict dynamics
Nikolas Galli, researcher of the Glob3ScienCE group (Global Studies on Sustainable Security in a Changing Environment) group of the Politecnico di Milano

The study Socio-hydrological features of armed conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin is authored by Nikolas Galli, Ilenia Epifani, Davide Danilo Chiarelli and Maria Cristina Rulli of the Politecnico di Milano and Jampel Dell’Angelo of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

The study online

Diagnosing prostate cancer using an “electronic nose”

Posted on 14/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Diag-Nose experimental project, the result of a collaboration between Humanitas and the Politecnico di Milano, aims to develop a method for diagnosing prostate cancer that is non-invasive and more accurate than traditional procedures.

It is an electronic nose that is capable of detecting a tumour by analysing a urine sample and identifying specific volatile molecules.

The results of the first trials, which have been published in the International Journal of Urology, are encouraging: the test correctly determines the presence of a tumour in cancer patients in 85.2% of cases and correctly gives a negative result for healthy patients in 79.1% of cases. The accuracy is significantly better than that of traditional diagnostic methods; indeed, biopsies have a tumour detection rate of 48.5% at most.

Furthermore, the prototype has other significant benefits when compared to a biopsy: in addition to being an invasive procedure, biopsies have a particularly high rate of false negatives for early-stage tumours due to the fact that only a small portion of tissue is collected and analysed.

The study, conducted between March 2020 and March 2021 at Humanitas Mater Domini in Castellanza and the Humanitas Research Hospital in Rozzano, involved 174 people divided into two groups: 88 patients with prostate cancer of varying grades and stages confirmed by a histological examination, and 86 people in a “control” group comprising men and women of different ages with no history of the disease who had undergone medical examinations. A urine sample was collected from each person and analysed at the laboratories of Professor Laura Capelli at the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering, whose research group was also responsible for building the prototype of the instrument.

The electronic nose is the evolution of a study conducted in 2012 by Humanitas with the collaboration of the Military Veterinary Centre in Grosseto (Cemivet) and supported by the Italian Ministry of Defence, which revealed how dogs, once properly trained, are able to detect prostate cancer by smelling patients’ urine.

The electronic nose developed as part of the Diag-Nose project is therefore a prototype created by reproducing the canine sense of smell, built using a series of sensors that are capable of analysing the volatile substances released into the air by urine samples.

Meta chooses Politecnico di Milano to carry out study on metaverse

Posted on 13/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Meta has chosen the Politecnico di Milano to carry out an independent academic study on the risks and opportunities of the metaverse, as part of a project that involves Meta investing $2.5 million in Europe. In fact, thanks to the XR Programs and Research Fund, academics from seven European countries, including Italy, will examine how metaverse technologies will interface on issues such as privacy, security, inclusion and the future of work.

It is estimated that the metaverse will lead to the creation of unprecedented assets, skills and professions, with a significant economic impact in global scenarios. However, the founding elements and critical success factors, as well as the tangible implications on the economy and society, are yet to be fully understood.
The study by the Politecnico di Milano wants to analyse the economic weight and social value of the metaverse, framing its emergence in a systemic perspective: its impact on individuals, society and the economy will be mapped using Italy as a practical case study.

Thanks to its immersiveness and spatial character, the metaverse will revolutionize the way people interact with content and with each other, by virtue of the reduction of cognitive loads linked to learning processes and the possibility of making any media experience more engaging. And it is precisely in this perspective that the importance of carrying out a systematic study of its effects to qualify opportunities and threats for industrial and social systems can be deduced; in particular, the scientific community can play a significant role in identifying the fields of application and their impact on the Italian and European economy
Giuliano Noci, scientific director of the study at the Politecnico di Milano together with Lucio Lamberti

says Giuliano Noci, scientific director (together with Lucio Lamberti) of the study at the Politecnico di Milano.

The metaverse will change the way people connect and businesses grow; it will lead to social experiences that bring us closer together than has been possible online to date. However, the technologies that will make up the metaverse will have to be inclusive and people will have to feel safe to be able to use them: since no company will own or manage it independently, collaboration and cooperation will be necessary.

The metaverse will be the result of a collective effort, which is why we believe it is essential to share our thoughts with authoritative third parties who can offer important food for thought. We could not be more proud to collaborate with the Politecnico di Milano, an academic institution that has been leading a privileged observatory on this issue for some time. We hope that their research can offer tangible elements to make the metaverse a social and economic opportunity on a global level
Angelo Mazzetti, Head of Institutional Affairs of Meta in Italy

New play area opened in Milan’s San Siro neighbourhood

Posted on 12/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

A new space developed by the Politecnico di Milano’s WRP research group has been unveiled in viale Aretusa, in Milan’s San Siro neighbourhood. Activities and shows were arranged for children from the nursery school in via Dolci, who attended the opening alongside their teachers.

The urban regeneration project, developed by the WRP group at Department of Architecture and Urban Studies with the support of Vivaio Cascina Bollate (the Cascina Bollate prison nursery), involved the transformation of three residual spaces: a median strip, which has been turned into a play area, and two triangle-shaped lateral areas that run along via Civitali and via Ricciarelli, which have been redeveloped into green spaces.

The work in the play area saw the installation of soft flooring, specific equipment and a new tree. Additionally, the project created three small “urban rooms”, built using lightweight mesh structures; spaces that are open yet have boundaries at the same time. The aim is to return a residual space to the neighbourhood, in a search for new relationships, forms and unexpected uses of public space.

The new playground was built with technical support from Recordati S.p.A. as part of the Cura e Adotta il Verde Pubblico (Take Care of and Adopt Public Green Spaces) project organised by the Municipality of Milan, with the aim of donating a new, green play area to children in the neighbourhood, redeveloping a space near which the Group’s headquarters have stood since 1953.

For the first year, the project will also receive backing from Equa Cooperativa Sociale, which will support the project among the residents, the local associations and schoolteachers, regularly organising recreational and educational activities in the new play area.

WRP – West Road Project is an action research project for the areas surrounding via Novara, in the west of Milan. It is co-financed by Polisocial, the Politecnico di Milano’s social engagement and responsibility programme, through the 2017 Polisocial Award. The project was conceived as a means of activating public networks and spaces through the suburban periphery. The possibilities and issues in the area have been investigated as part of a participatory design process, aiming to regenerate marginal spaces and promote cyclability along via Novara.

AMBITION: supporting education of young professionals across Europe and Africa

Posted on 05/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Politecnico di Milano has been awarded an Erasmus+ grant to develop the project AMBITION. The project will last until mid-2025 and has been funded with 400.000 euros.

The Erasmus+ AMBITION – AMBassadors for sustainable transITION’s will support the education of a future generation of qualified young professionals trained across Europe and Africa, well equipped with the tools to promote a culture of sustainable development and activate research in this field.

This goal will be achieved through the development of a Joint Honours Programme in technical disciplines for talented PhD candidates who wish to become ambassadors for Sustainable Development.

Specific aims are planned on three levels.

Institutional level: to co-design and implement a Joint Honours Programme for PhD talented candidates across the partner university as an asset for international cooperation to boost the contribution of multidisciplinary science and competences in the sustainable transition in both EU and AU universities.

People level: to enrich the capacity of PhD candidates and provide them with a proper enabling environment in term of skills and platform, to act as science ambassadors to boost sustainable innovation in the EU-AU countries partner universities.

Strategic level: to consolidate PhD education as a strategic asset for countries and regions since it fosters the role of science diplomacy and responsible research, to create an added value for society and policy makers when dealing with the global and just sustainable transition.

AMBITION is the first joint initiative developed by the IDEA League Expert Working Group “Partnerships with African Universities and Institutions”, that aims to strengthen and expand IDEA League’s collaborations with African universities by promoting and addressing the global challenges as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals.

The partners in the project are: Politecnico di Milano (coordinator), RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), TU Delft (Netherlands), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), Strathmore University (Ghana), and ETH Zurich (Switzerland) as an associate partner.

URBEM: a national database of reference buildings to assess energy saving measures

Posted on 02/12/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The URBEM (Urban Reference Buildings for Energy Modelling) project is financed by the Ministry of Universities and Research (MUR) as a Project of Significant National Interest (PRIN). With participation from 10 Italian universities coordinated by professor Francesco Causone of the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Energy, the project aims to create a national database of reference buildings to be used with UBEM (Urban Building Energy Modelling) tools capable of assessing energy saving measures for major building stocks through dynamic simulations involving several buildings simultaneously.

This database will make it possible to reduce uncertainty in results of UBEM simulations, providing a reference tool and a methodology of analysis for public authorities (and other property stock owners), who will be helped in their management of building assets, conservation activities and the promotion of policies and incentives.

In the current phase, researchers are defining and characterising the building and energy databases available at the national, regional and local levels. This will be followed by a data mining and data analysis phase and then the implementation of the reference buildings within urban-scale energy simulation software.

URBEM project website