Erik Franco – Pagina 17 – Progress in Research

DC4DM Project

Posted on 20/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Digital Creativity for developing Digital Maturity future skills (DC4DM) is the three-year research project funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme. Its main objective is to implement, apply and disseminate the DC4DM educational model to develop and empower digital creative abilities to strategically drive the application of future emerging digital technologies in any field.

Shared within a European network of HEIs, SMEs and Startups, Business Incubators, the DC4DM model will train talents that will enable companies to achieve digital maturity. They will become Digital Maturity Enablers.

Design, with its human-centred approach, plays a key role in this transformation. As researchers and educators, we must update our educational models and train the necessary skills so that our students are able to strategically address the future social and environmental challenges of the future by exploiting the opportunities offered by emerging digital technologies, keeping people at the centre.
Project Coordinator Marita Canina, Associate Professor and scientific head of the research lab IDEActivity Centre

The DC4DM model, developed considering the main Digitally Mature company’s needs, promotes the development and empowerment of creativity, design and entrepreneurial skills with tools and methods to adapt and advance new collaborative practices, integrating digital technologies, creative process and design in order to boost employability, and companies’ competitiveness and innovation potential, in different contexts of application. For each identified need, the model integrates the specific set of skills defined as Digital Creative Abilities (DCA) that empower people to express their creative potential and think and act in a non-predictable digital world. The skills included in the model are structured along different dimensions, among these, the Digital Sustainability and Responsibility become therefore a pillar on which the model is based. This dimension includes the future, ethical and sustainable thinking skills relevant when designing for uncertain digital futures.

The project main outcome will be an educational box that includes the action model and the tools and methods to train cross-functional teams of design, engineer, business students to face the complex real-world challenges brought by digital transformation.

The ongoing digital evolution is having a strong impact on every sector of our society, creating opportunities and threats that need to be strategically addressed and managed.

The consortium, coordinated by Prof. Marita Canina, Associate Professor at the Department of Design and scientific head of the research lab IDEActivity Centre, includes 4 universities from 3 EU countries – Politecnico di Milano (IT), Universitè Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne (FR), Institut Mines-Telecom (FR), Universidade de Madeira (PT) – and one business incubator – Startup Madeira (PT).

Home page del progetto DC4DM

Pagina del progetto Erasmus+

Super fast quantum battery

Posted on 19/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Researchers from the Physics Department of the Politecnico di Milano and the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the Cnr have built a battery which, following the laws of quantum physics, has a recharge time that is inversely related to the battery capacity.

Tersilla Virgili (Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council Cnr-Ifn) and Giulio Cerullo (Physics Department of the Politecnico di Milano) have shown that it is possible to manufacture a type of quantum battery where the charging power increases faster by increasing the battery capacity.

The fabricated device is a microcavity in which the active material consists of organic molecules dispersed in an inert matrix.

Each molecule represents a unit that can exist in a quantum superposition state of two energy levels (fundamental and excited), similar to the way a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information, can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously in quantum computers. By constructing the quantum battery in a way that units can exist in superposition, the total system can behave collectively. This behaviour, known as quantum coherence, allows the units to act cooperatively, giving rise to a hyper-fast charge that depends on the number of molecule-units.
Prof. Giulio Cerullo

This new technology could find possible applications in devices such as wireless chargers, solar cells and cameras.

Superabsorption in an organic microcavity: towards a quantum battery.

Agreement with Pirelli renewed

Posted on 18/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Ten years after the first agreement, Pirelli, Politecnico di Milano and Fondazione Politecnico di Milano have signed off a continuation of the ‘Joint Labs’ programme, focused on research projects for the continuous technological innovation of tyres.

The Joint Lab underlines the importance of this long standing and constructive relationship between university and company, one of the keys indicated in the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza. Research and training are the prerequisites for an industrial development that looks to the future. The agreement between the Politenico di Miano and Pirelli is solid and this is the direction we wish to pursue
Ferruccio Resta, Rector of Politecnico di Milano.

The collaboration agreement, which will last three years and provides for an investment of 2 million euros, focuses on these main areas:

Simulation, through the integrated use of the static simulator, installed in the Pirelli’s research and development centre, and the dynamic simulator of the Politecnico, with the aim of optimising the development and testing of new tyres, reducing lead times and strengthening collaborations with car manufacturers.
Materials, with the development of innovative solutions, such as new materials with low environmental impact, and the modelling of mixing processes;
Product and cyber development, with innovations in areas such as tyre aerodynamics, automated tread modelling and intelligent vehicle control.

In particular, five departments of Politecnico di Milano are involved in scope of this agreement: Mechanical Engineering; Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering; Mathematics; Electronics, Information and Bioengineering; and Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Our priorities with the ‘Joint Labs’ programme take in all aspects of sustainability, evolved automation, virtualisation and connectivity, The collaboration with the University underlines our commitment to strengthen the core of our group’s know-how in these key areas within Italy.
Marco Tronchetti Provera, Pirelli’s Executive Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Research and training are the prerequisites for an industrial development that looks to the future.

This agreement aims to consolidate enduring relationships for investments in the long term, which will enable the realization of advanced research with a high level of experimental and innovative content. Strategic partnerships like this create constant dialogue between companies and the university in order to shares needs, strategies and visions.
Andrea Sianesi, Chairman of Fondazione Politecnico di Milano.

Lasers allow discovering how DNA protects itself from sunlight

Posted on 17/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

A new study published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications explains how DNA is protected from mutations caused by ultraviolet light via its constituent elements, nucleosides. The results, obtained by using extremely short pulses of light, may lead to important applications in nanotechnology and pharmacology, such as fighting skin tumours.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers at the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnology under the National Research Council (CNR-IFN), the Politecnico di Milano, the Università di Bologna, the Università della Tuscia, and Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf.

Studying how nucleosides interact with light on very short timescales is essential for understanding the complex physical processes that lead to DNA photodamage,
Rocío Borrego-Varillas, first author, researcher at the CNR-IFN and the Politecnico di Milano.

Lasers enable incredibly short pulses of light to be generated with a duration of a few millionths or billionths of a second. They also allow us to observe very quick phenomena, such as the fundamental processes that occur when light interacts with living organisms, for example, in vision or photosynthesis.

DNA, the molecule that encodes the information necessary for building proteins, efficiently absorbs the UV component of sunlight, a property common to many biomolecules. Due to the high energy of UV radiation, its absorption may trigger a chain of chemical reactions, with the resulting corruption of information encoded in the sequence of bases (photodamage) and serious consequences (such as skin tumours). Fortunately, in most cases, DNA molecules are able to efficiently dissipate the energy contained in UV light due to a photoprotective process that inhibits damage.

In nucleosides, these processes are particularly efficient due to the speed with which the absorbed energy is dissipated, but it is precisely this speed which makes their study so difficult, something which has long been debated by scientists; hence the idea to use ultra short pulses of light to trigger these processes and follow all the phases in their evolution. The technique was applied to the study of two nucleosides: uridine and methyluridine. By observing molecular processes on such short timescales, the researchers have been able to understand for the first time the mechanism through which nucelosides dissipate the energy deposited by UV light.

The difficulty with studying such fast molecular processes is similar to taking a picture of a car moving at full speed. To prevent the picture from looking fuzzy, a short exposure time is chosen. If we want to capture images of a molecular process that lasts less than a millionth of a second, we need very short flashes of UV light.

ST and PoliMi Expand Semiconductor R&D Infrastructure at PoliFab

Posted on 14/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Politecnico di Milano and STMicroelectronics have inaugurated the expansion of semiconductor manufacturing capabilities at PoliFab, the University’s micro- and nanotechnology R&D center. A laboratory created to provide the highest technological standards for a wide range of applications and processes involving the five Key Enabling Technologies: photonics, micro and nanoelectronics, biotechnologies, advanced materials and nanotechnology.

Building on the long-standing collaboration between the two organizations, the PoliFab’s clean room – a facility where silicon wafers are made into semiconductor chips – has received state-of-the-art equipment from STMicroelectronics to boost joint R&D efforts in Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and motion control, as well as in power electronics and galvanic isolation.

A physical site where exciting scientific ideas can meet state-of-the-art semiconductor technology

The enlarged clean-room infrastructure will make Politecnico di Milano even more attractive for talented researchers and students and contribute to fuel ST’s advances and development roadmap in semiconductor technologies including MEMS, where the Company is a world leader with over 15 billion devices sold to date. With the core of ST’s global MEMS R&D operations located in Lombardy, close to Milan, the cooperation with PoliFab aims at setting up a center of excellence for studies and research on advanced materials for MEMS in the region.

The ongoing collaboration also encompasses investments in staff and programs, with ST supporting scholarships and the recruitment of professors and researchers, as well as financing joint research projects.

With the new spaces inaugurated today, the total classified area of PoliFab spans 610 sq metres, plus annexed characterization laboratories, thus making it comparable to analogous facilities of the best European research institutions.

We are pioneering a new model for “fast technology transfer” based on the realization of a joint research and innovation infrastructure where top-class semiconductor equipment, the very same used in a semiconductor fab, is made available to researchers and students.
Polifab 2.0 is a physical site where exciting scientific ideas can meet state-of-the-art semiconductor technology, thus speeding-up both fundamental research and its technology transfer.
said Riccardo Bertacco, director of Polifab.

CO2OLHEAT

Posted on 13/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Politecnico di Milano is a partner in CO2OLHEAT – Supercritical CO2 power cycles demonstration in Operational environment Locally valorising industrial Waste Heat, a research project funded by the European Union as part of the Horizon 2020 programme with a total budget of 18.8 million euros.

The aim of the project is to support the EU objectives relating to energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by recovering waste heat from industrial processes and converting it into electricity via an energy system based on innovative closed thermodynamic cycles using carbon dioxide in supercritical conditions (sCO2).

This four-year project will lead to construction of the EU’s first sCO2 energy plant, which will be installed and operate in the CEMEX cement works, in Prachovice in the Czech Republic.

The Politecnico di Milano research group, headed by Professor Giacomo Persico, will provide a multi-disciplinary contribution to the project, systematising the competences of the Laboratory of Fluid-Dynamics of Turbomachinery (LFM) with those of the Group for Energy Conversion Systems (GECOS) in the Department of Energy.
On the fluid dynamics front, research with focus on shape optimisation of the sCO2 compressor, the most critical component of the system, and on high-fidelity analysis of performance and function of the compressor itself and the high-pressure turbine.
On the energy front, studies will concentrate on analysis of the system’s thermodynamic behaviour, under both project and non-project conditions.

PhD student Neda Taymourtash wins ERF Chairman’s award

Posted on 12/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Dr. Neda Taymourtash, a double PhD student in Aerospace Engineering of Politecnico di Milano and University of Glasgow won the Chairman’s award at the 47th European Rotorcraft Forum. It is one of the premier events for the rotorcraft community, bringing together manufacturers, research establishments, academia, operators and regulatory agencies to discuss advances in research and development.

Neda Taymourtash is part of the project NITROS, a H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Joint European Doctorate dedicated to Rotorcraft Safety.

The operation of rotorcraft close to the obstacles in windy conditions is often a complex task that increases significantly the pilot workload, due to the air turbulence created by the wind, to the interaction of the craft and to the flows generated by it. Flight testing is required to study those phenomena and understand the effects over flight security. However, it is frequently expensive and potentially hazardous. Computational tools can actually be helpful, but they too require experimental verification of their ability to grasp all aspects of phenomena of intrinsic complexity.

In this research it is proposed to pursue a different path, that will start directly from experimental measures carried out in real time and based on scale models of helicopters near obstacles conducted in the Polimi large wind tunnel environmental test section. These measurements can be used directly to represent the influence of the flow field on aircraft by using them directly within flight simulators. Such flight simulators can then be used to test robust approach strategies that can help the pilot reduce the additional workload in the presence of highly turbulent flow fields.

The path of our young researcher is already full of experiences. After a BSc in Aerospace Engineering and a MSc in Flight Control and Dynamics in Tehran, Neda Taymourtash was able to deepen her research interests in flight mechanics, flight simulation and advanced flight control methods at the universities of Brussels and Lausanne, before arriving at the Politecnico di Milano.

A part of her prize consists of a fully paid invitation to present her work on “Simulation and Testing of Helicopter-Ship Aerodynamic Interaction” to the next Asian/Australian Rotorcraft Forum, scheduled in late 2022.

CONI Agreement

Posted on 11/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Politecnico di Milano and CONI – Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (Italian National Olympic Committee) signed a framework agreement for training students and graduates and conduct sports facilities research.

The partnership promotes training initiatives and learning paths that allow students and graduates to expand their sports facilities construction and management knowledge. This includes laboratory exercises, projects and degree papers.

This agreement will allow studies and research aimed at sector technological innovation and provide courses for CONI operators’ professional updating.

New technologies to support people who have lost their sense of smell

Posted on 10/01/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The ROSE project, with more than €3 million in European Union funds under the H2020 Pathfinder Pilot programme, has begun. The goal of the project is to support people who have lost their sense of smell.

It is estimated that the partial or total loss of smell (hyposmia/anosmia) affects about 20% of the world’s population, with negative effects on quality of life, a problem that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, half of people affected by COVID-19 have experienced some form of loss of smell, which sometimes persists even after recovery from the disease.

In contrast to other sensory systems, there is currently no advanced technology that can partially or totally restore the sense of smell. The ROSE project will combine nanotechnology, microtechnology, biotechnology, mechanical design, neurosurgery, olfactory exams, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, with the overall objective of verifying the feasibility of a miniature olfactory prosthesis that combines odour microsensors and neural stimulators. This solution will be evaluated in patients who have trouble smelling.

Seven European partners will collaborate in the project, with coordination by the French CNRS, and specifically the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center. In particular, the role played by the Politecnico di Milano will be to develop a method to acquire and model patients’ nasal cavities in order to design custom miniature olfactory receptors and to design, simulate, produce, and test prototypes of such receptors using 3D printing technologies.

The representatives for the Politecnico are Marina Carulli and Monica Bordegoni in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

For further information: https://rose-h2020.eu/