Erik Franco – Pagina 18 – Progress in Research

Chemistry: Study Published in Science Advances

Posted on 22/12/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The prestigious journal ‘Science Advances’ has published a study resulting from a collaboration between the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering ‘Giulio Natta’ at the Politecnico di Milano and the Department of Physics at the ‘La Sapienza’ University of Rome. The research was conducted under the PRIN project ‘Soft Adaptive Networks’, for which Francesco Sciortino (La Sapienza) is the national principal investigator and Roberto Piazza is the Politecnico unit head.

The research regarded gels composed of DNA ‘nanostars’, nanostructures consisting of multiple arms connected by a common core. Such systems can form two types of gel. The first is due to phase separation, as normally occurs in colloidal systems. In the second, ‘equilibrium gels’, the network forms progressively and continuously.

The latter, predicted theoretically by Prof. Sciortino for ‘reduced valence’ particles, that is, those that interact only through a limited number of surface sites, were first observed in this work using a new optical correlation technique called ‘2D Photon Correlation Imaging’. This technique was originally developed by Enrico Lattuada in the Soft Matter lab in the Department of Chemistry at the Politecnico, later moving to La Sapienza, where Dr Lattuada is currently a postdoc researcher.

The research, with first author Enrico Lattuada, is co-authored by Debora Caprara, Francesco Sciortino (La Sapienza) and Roberto Piazza (Politecnico di Milano).

Find the full-text article here.

A labyrinth that traps noise

Posted on 20/12/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Labyrinthine metamaterials capable of absorbing sound waves: this is the new technology developed by six students at the Alta Scuola Politecnica, an international programme reserved for the best students from the Politecnico di Milano and the Politecnico di Torino.

It consists of panels capable of absorbing sound due to a particular internal structure featuring innovative acoustic properties. In fact, the performance of the panels is not only due to their constituent components, but also their labyrinthine geometric shape, which makes the sound wave reflect multiple times, attenuating it until it disappears. It is as if the sound is ‘lost’ in the labyrinth. These structures are capable of muffling different types of sound, from those with average frequencies typical of speech and some musical instruments, to those with low frequencies caused by engines. They may therefore be applied to a wide range of sectors, from construction to automobiles to domestic environments.

The six students who created the panel are Leonardo Bettini, Venus Hasanuzzaman Kamrul, Emanuele Musso, Fabio Nistri, Davide Piciucco, and Matteo Zemello. The panels are light and low cost, since they can be produced entirely with 3D printing using plastic waste.

The project was tested and validated in the Department of Energy-DENERG ‘Galileo Ferraris’ at the Politecnico di Torino with the industrial partner Phononic Vibes, a company created in 2018 as a spin-off of the Politecnico di Milano. The project will continue under the FET – Boheme European research path coordinated by the Università di Trento with the involvement of the Politecnico di Torino, Imperial College of London, and ETH Zürich.

SOLUS: Multimodal Tomography is here

Posted on 16/12/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The SOLUS Project, coordinated by the Politecnico di Milano, has come to a close with the creation of an innovative multimodal tomographic imaging system for improving breast cancer diagnosis.

The system, developed to discriminate noninvasively between malignant and benign lesions, is currently in the clinical validation phase at the San Raffaele Hospital. The validation will last two years, but initial results will be already available in the next months.

Breast cancer is the most common type of tumor and an early diagnosis is essential to giving women a higher a chance of survival. Screening programs are effective, but they have a high rate of false positives.

SOLUS – Smart Optical and Ultrasound Diagnostics for Breast Cancer – offers a solution to this problem, combining ultrasound imaging (ultrasound and elastography) and diffuse optical tomography in a single probe, thus making it possible to simultaneously evaluate the morphology, stiffness, and composition of the tissues and the blood parameters.

The development of the SOLUS imaging system required significant advancements in the field of photonics (picosecond pulsed laser, highly sensitive time domain detectors, dedicated acquisition electronics), also leading to the development of the “Smart Optode”, a key element of the multimodal imaging system that is, however, also available as an independent device for diffuse optical spectroscopy in the time domain, which combines very compact dimensions (few cm³) with state of the art features and has potential applications in the medical field and beyond: from monitoring of physical rehabilitation and athletic training activities, to the nondestructive evaluation of fruit in the field or timber.

The Horizon 2020 SOLUS project was coordinated by Professor Paola Taroni of the Politecnico di Milano’s Physics Department, and brings together 9 partners from 5 European countries, with expertise in the photonics, electronics, and medical imaging sectors: 2 universities (Politecnico di Milano and University College London), 1 research centre (CEA-LETI Grenoble), 4 companies (Vermon, Hologic Supersonic Imagine, Micro Photon Devices, iC-Haus), 1 hospital (San Raffaele Hospital), and EIBIR-European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research, which connects medical imaging societies at the European level.

The whole consortium is grateful to the European Commission and to the European Technology Platform Photonics21, which supported the project making its developments possible.

The SOLUS project is an initiative of the Photonics Public Private Partnership. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731877.

For more information: http://www.solus-project.eu/

Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre set up at Politecnico di Milano

Posted on 13/12/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Foundation of the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre, the collection of the immense heritage left by this designer who graduated from Politecnico di Milano in1969. Attending the presentation event were the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, Ferruccio Resta, the President of the Fondazione Gianfranco Ferré Alberto Ferré and the Director General of the Foundation Rita Airaghi.

After establishing the Foundation in 2008, the Ferré family has now decided to donate its archives and the headquarters in Via Tortona, designed by Franco Raggi, to Politecnico di Milano.

Rector Resta commented:

The value of heritage is that it resists, grows and looks to the future. Preserving means continuing to make thoughts and objects come alive in new forms. This is the objective of the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre, which we are inaugurating today, with the aim of promoting digital innovation in the creative and cultural industries.

As it stands, the Foundation’s heritage, almost entirely catalogued in a digital database, encompasses more than 150,000 documents and artefacts, including sketches, technical drawings, photos, clothing and accessories, objects, books, magazines, films, press reviews, writings, lectures, and notes by the designer.

This archive, recognised as being of “particular cultural interest” by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities – Archival Superintendence for Lombardy, is now part of the Politecnico di Milano Historical Archives system.

Coordinated by the Department of Design, the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre intends to merge the skills, technical-scientific knowledge and design culture of the Politecnico di Milano with the tangible and intangible heritage relating to the history, culture and techniques of fashion preserved and enhanced by the Gianfranco Ferré Foundation.

Gianfranco Ferré, a great fashion designer and artist, was an ambassador for Italy and for our university the world over: one of those names that makes us proud. What strikes us about all his work is its precision, perhaps due to the design skills inherent in his training as an architect, and its emotion. This combination of technique and art, method and inventiveness is something we encourage in our classrooms and laboratories with the experimentation that today happens thanks to the increasingly closer convergence of technology and creativity.

added Resta.

The Centre is based on an interdisciplinary vision capable of combining tradition with innovation and technology, and it integrates in-depth knowledge of design and fashion with digital skills. One distinctive aspect is therefore the grafting of techniques and knowledge typical of the tailoring, craftsmanship and technical culture of the creative industries with advanced technological solutions—such as augmented reality and virtual reality; reverse modelling, digital prototyping and 3D printing; haptic and sonic perception; holographic rendering, animated graphics, and movie production.

Digital technologies have already been widely applied in the fashion sector, but it still lacks an integrated approach capable of exploring the full potential of hybridisation between the physical and virtual dimensions, in order to rethink the use of fashion artefacts from a viewpoint of cultural enhancement and “augmented narration”.

The Research Centre intends to launch a series of interdisciplinary experiments which, under the coordination of the Fashion in Process Laboratory of the Department of Design, will involve many of the university’s disciplinary components, from mechanical engineering to information engineering, bioengineering, and mathematical engineering, with a view to exploring some research and innovation trajectories. The first year of activity will end with an initiative open to the public that will showcase some unique pieces from the Ferré archive set against the new scenarios of digital transformation of the creative and cultural industries. 

The establishment of the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre at Politecnico di Milano makes me particularly happy and proud to have honoured my commitment to keep alive the memory and value of my brother Gianfranco.

comments Alberto Ferré.

We can now hand this task over to those who will certainly know how to use the most advanced tools to make raise awareness and further disseminate a cultural heritage of immense value, thanks to different projects and experimentation supported by new languages. A return home, to ‘his’ Politecnico, where teaching and research are the result of continuous experimentation, where the latest technologies can be used to interpret and lend contemporary form to the fruit of the poetry, creativity and dreams that underlie Gianfranco’s fashion, which has always combined these values with method and design “Made in Politecnico”.

TToP: a replica of human tissues to develop new drugs

Posted on 29/11/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The innovative cell culture system developed within the TToP (True Tissue on Platform) project was among the winners of the latest edition of StartCup Lombardia in the Life Science & Medtech category, winning a prize of € 25,000 and the chance to join the PNI (National Innovation Award) competition.

Promoted by Regione Lombardia with the coordination of PoliHub, StartCup Lombardia is a competition organized by local universities and university incubators to encourage the birth of new high-potential businesses.

The premise of the research is that in vitro preclinical studies and animal testing often fail to predict drug safety and efficacy, due to their limited mimicking of the human physiological environment.

TToP: True Tissue on Platform is a low-cost, highly scalable and user-friendly technological solution, capable of replicating the physiology of the human body, thus improving the efficiency of the development process of new drugs while minimizing the use of animal models.

Its main features are:

– the possibility to host different structures inside a retrievable cartridge (e.g., microporous membranes, 3D scaffolds, tissue biopsies);

– the ability to enable bicompartmental cultures;

– the optical accessibility to both sides of the hosted structure;

– the possibility to retrieve in a controlled manner the biological sample and to reuse it for further analysis or other experiments.

Already winner of the Switch2Product competition, TToP was developed in the ATTiC Lab of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering by Lorenzo Coppadoro, Gianfranco Beniamino Fiore and Monica Soncini. The team also includes Maria Lombardi and Chiara Foglieni of the San Raffele Hospital in Milan, who support the project and cooperate in evaluating the device effectiveness.

Mega-events and cultural heritage: risks and opportunities

Posted on 18/11/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Winter Olympics Milano-Cortina 2026, the Jubilee, the Expo, European Capitals of Culture: how can cities host mega-events without putting their cultural heritage at risk?

The first systematic documented answer to this question comes from the HOMEE, Heritage Opportunities/Threats within Mega-events in Europe project coordinated by Politecnico di Milano.

Adapting and reusing infrastructures and existing venues to lower the costs of mega-events and improve the long-term effects, integrating structures into the city’s existing urban fabric, mobilising actors, resources and historic locations in a capillary way. These are some of the recommendations that emerged thanks to the HOMEE project and are now included in a Charter, a valuable tool to aid cities like Rome and Milan, getting ready to host the 2025 Jubilee and the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2026.

Three years of work have included analysis of case histories of cultural mega-events throughout Europe (including the Expo 2015 in Milan and Matera European Capital of Culture 2019) carried out by 4 research centres: Politecnico di Milano, Hull University (UK), Neapolis University di Pafos (Cyprus), and the International Cultural Center (Poland), in collaboration with 16 associated partners, selected from public and no-profit institutions throughout Europe. This research has led to drawing up of the Charter for mega-events in heritage-rich cities. A document that, with 4 general themes, 13 principles, 51 recommendations and various case histories, guides cities getting ready to host mega-events, which will be able to benefit from the opportunities offered without compromising their cultural heritage and local communities.

The dissemination stage is achieving results way beyond the project’s highest expectations, with important scientific publications, and associations and organisations worldwide showing interest in and subscribing to the Charter. This confirms the technical and political relevance of the Charter and of our research project.

comments HOMEE Project coordinator Davide Ponzini, associate professor at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies.

The 4 themes cover, firstly, the context: mega-events must be selected, scaled and integrated to respect their location, where possible plans should reuse and adapt existing facilities or design context-sensitive interventions. Then, planning legacies, useful for aligning plans and projects for mega-events with urban and territorial strategies. Thirdly, inclusive governance: involve cultural heritage experts, policy makers and operators in the bidding, planning and legacy phases. And finally, communities and identities: mobilise communities locally for a more equal, long-lasting urban heritage.

National interest in the Charter has come in the form of subscription by the National Association of Italian Municipalities, which represents over 7,000 municipalities.

While subscription by Europa Nostra, and the European Capitals of Culture 2022 and 2023 are definitely excellent signs on an international level. We welcome subscription by ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) with huge satisfaction as it motivates us to do even more to disseminate the Charter in Italy.

From today, historic heritage-rich cities have a new tool to help them make appropriate choices suitable for their particular context and sustainable development.

New ELLIS Association Unit in Milan

Posted on 16/11/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The Milanese universities of Bocconi, Università Statale di Milano, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca and Politecnico di Milano have joined forces to establish a campus of excellence for research and training in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in Milan. The four universities have become one of the units of ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems.

Established in 2018, ELLIS is the association that brings together Europe’s best artificial intelligence scientists and academics with the objective of promoting continent-wide scientific development on this crucial topic, unsurprisingly also considered fundamental by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) for Italian recovery.

Along with Mayor Giuseppe Sala, the initiative was presented by the Rector of Bocconi University, Gianmario Verona, the Executive Vice Rector of the State University, Maria Pia Abbracchio, the Rector of Bicocca University, Giovanna Iannantuoni, and the Rector of the Politecnico, Ferruccio Resta.

The new ELLIS unit will have the task of establishing Milan as one of Europe’s leading scientific centres for AI and machine learning. This research focuses on four areas: interactive machine learning, which examines how an algorithm interacts with the environment; neural networks and deep learning; health and computational biology, which applies AI to medicine; and the use of AI for the analysis and processing of natural language.

The Rector of the Politecnico, Ferruccio Resta, remarked:

“The central role of artificial intelligence and machine learning issues, their uses and consequences on the economic and social fronts give technical and scientific universities a great responsibility. Technological development is anything but neutral: it is a complex process, as the four lines of research we have decided to outline illustrate: interaction with the environment; neural networks and deep learning; medicine; language. Consequently, it must be anticipated, managed and shared. Combining the best academic resources and developing Milan into a campus of excellence is our duty towards the development and growth, not only of our city, but also of the country and the university system, which is called upon more and more to operate according to a concept of interaction and exchange. The Politecnico di Milano is taking part in this initiative as part of a mutually beneficial partnership with other universities. A winning model to aspire to in a European context”.

The Unit will be led by four proponents and scientific coordinators, one from each university, who will manage the Unit in rotation: Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (Full Professor of Computer Science, Università Statale di Milano, who will lead the group as Director for the first year), Nicola Gatti (Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Politecnico di Milano), Gabriella Pasi (Full Professor of Computer Science, Università di Milano-Bicocca Università degli studi di Milano Bicocca) and Riccardo Zecchina (Full Professor of Theoretical Physics, Università Bocconi).

Introducing Tech4Planet

Posted on 15/11/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Tech4Planet, the second National Technology Transfer Centre ofCDP Venture Capital Sgr has been set up to promote market access and the growth of new companies conceived in research laboratories and dedicated to environmental sustainability, particularly in the energytech, circular economy, sustainable manufacturing, smart mobility and water management sectors.

With a total investment of up to €55 million from the Technology Transfer Fund of CDP Venture Capital Sgr, the Tech4Planet Hub was created in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano with the involvement of the Politecnico di Torino and the Politecnico di Bari. Part of the overall investment will also be dedicated to supporting the launch of new venture capital funds specialising in the environmental sustainability sectors, which be tasked with continuing to finance the most promising start-ups.

An investment strategy, on the one hand, geared to increase the technological and business maturity of the inventions produced by research and, on the other hand, designed to strengthen the venture capital system specialised in key frontier technologies for our country.

Sustainability, development of the territory and strengthening of the major centres of innovation: these are priority aspects in the policies for the relaunch of the country that this initiative fully grasps.

comments Ferruccio Resta, Rector of Politecnico di Milano.

The Tech4Planet hub will engage important industrial players operating in the sector and will be distributed throughout the territory through the laboratories of the Politecnico di Milano, Torino and Bari, which will contribute to the research of projects with a high market impact, also triggering a catalytic effect on the regions of southern Italy.

The researchers involved will benefit from economic resources and specialist skills to carry out technical and business feasibility studies, thanks to the involvement of their respective incubators: PoliHub, I3P and the newly established incubator of the Politecnico di Bari.

The Politecnico di Milano, one of the first universities in Italy to set up a business incubator, today joins the Politecnico di Torino and the Politecnico di Bari in a nationwide project that demonstrates, to all intents and purposes, the centrality of the academic system in entrepreneurial development.

The entrepreneurial acceleration phase for the transfer of inventions to the market will then be carried out at the Gasometri Innovation District of the Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with PoliHub and specialised international partners, and it will also be open to the research projects already set up in companies by the entire network of Italian universities and research centres.

The Politecnico di Milano Foundation is one of the co-investors in the Tech4Planet hub, and important agreements are being finalised with leading companies in the sector and institutional bodies, which will increase the €55 million investment currently being allocated by CDP Venture Capital, with a potential overall estimated leverage effect of more than €130 million over 4 years for the creation and development of more than 60 new companies.

Within this network, the Gasometri Innovation District is a strategic node: a meeting point for university research, companies and venture capital in a European context. A resource that gives life to the new Tech4Planet hub thanks to the partnership with CDP Venture Capital. And the concrete demonstration of a synergy that is capable of exploiting what already exists as part of a broader relaunch plan that looks to the future of new generations of entrepreneurs as part of the country system.

Environmental sustainability is one of the most pressing challenges of our century and the key focus of the European Green Deal’s commitment to achieve a progressive and complete decarbonisation of the system by 2050. Internationally, venture capital is definitely moving towards investments in this sector. In Italy, VC investments in this sector only account for 0.8% of European investments, also due to the lack of specialized funds. Nevertheless, Italy has a great potential in terms of publications in the field of “Renewable energy, sustainability and environment”, where it is the fifth country in the world and third in Europe.

ACCEPT: a climbing wall for rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy

Posted on 10/11/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

It was inaugurated at the headquarters of PlayMore! in Milan the new ACCEPT climbing wall. A special wall, consisting of three interchangeable modules, adapted, sensorized, reconfigurable and interactive, optimized for children with Cerebral Palsy.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most frequent pediatric neuromuscular disorder. Children with CP can, in many cases, partly recover their neuromotor skills through intensive rehabilitation.  Adapted sport constitutes a valid complement to standard rehabilitation. It is highly engaging, potentially leading to results otherwise obtained over a much longer time.

Starting from this evidence and in partnership with FightTheStroke, the project focusses on sport climbing to study, realize and test ACCEPT for the rehabilitation of children between 6 and 13 years.

The research aims at exploring and promoting the role of sport climbing as a therapeutic tool, proposing a solution that is at once training, inclusion, and a means of tracking rehabilitation progresses.

The scientific director is Professor Alessandro Colombo of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering. In addition to this department, the Department of Mechanics, the Department of Design and the Technology Transfer Office participate in the research.

Representing the partner of the project were Martina Riva, councillor for Sport, Tourism and Youth Policies of the Municipality of Milan; Francesca Fedeli of Fondazione FightTheStroke; Simone Salvagnin, head of paraclimbing F.A.S.I. Federazione Arrampicata Sportiva Italiana; MILANOARRAMPICATA Asd.

Sponsor: RGTECH, Vibram SpA, SCARPA SpA, TASCI Srl/Montura, Smog, PBN, T.F. Carpenteria, Opera3D.

ACCEPT is a project funded by the “Sport and social inclusion” 2019 edition of Polisocial Award, the program that rewards scientific research with a high social impact of the Politecnico di Milano.

Find out more on: https://accept.polimi.it/

A discovery about cuprates can reduce the costs of electricity

Posted on 08/11/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The results of a study by the researchers of the Politecnico di Milano, the Chalmers University of Gothenburg, the Sapienza University of Roma and the Sincrotrone Europeo ESRF could bring about a revolution in electricity production and distribution systems, reducing energy costs.

The study, published in the prestigious Science magazine, reveals the unique behaviour of cuprates, superconductor materials composed of copper, oxygen and other elements.

Superconductors are materials inside which electric current travels, below a certain critical temperature, with no resistance and therefore without wasting energy. Cuprates have an important property: even at a higher temperature than the critical one, when they are in a “normal” state and therefore do not display zero resistance, they behave in a non-conventional way. And in fact this has led to them being known as “strange metals”. This strangeness lies in the fact that their resistivity increases in line with the temperature, something that does not usually occur for normal metals. The international study shows that, in the normal state, the presence of charge density waves modifies the “strange metal” behaviour type of the cuprates and brings it more into line with that of normal metals.

“This type of observation is highly significant because it finally shows a correlation between macroscopic properties (resistivity in the normal state, superconductivity) and microscopic properties (charge density waves). This may be the key to the problem long sought after by the theoreticians, a solid foundation on which to finally build the explanation of why superconductor cuprates behave in such a unique way.”

explains Giacomo Ghiringhelli, professor of Experimental Physics at the Politecnico di Milano.

To comprehend the importance of this discovery, we must consider that superconductivity is the most spectacular macroscopic manifestation of quantum physics, visible to the naked eye, essential for describing the phenomena on the atomic scale but not usually on the macroscopic scale. However, superconductivity is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Now we are discovering that even at a high temperature, in the “normal” state, cuprates display quantum behaviour, so can be defined as “ultra-quantum” matter.

For more information:
The online study

Image credits: Yen Strandqvist/Chalmers