Innovation – Progress in Research

Agreement with a2a

Posted on 09/02/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The A2A Life Company Group and Politecnico di Milano have started up collaboration for the development of innovation, research and training initiatives in the Energy & Utility sector, to support Italy’s ecological transition. The recently signed partnership model is based on two agreements with a total value of 8 million euros and a duration of 5 years.

In particular, the agreement provides for the establishment of a Joint Research Centre to implement multidisciplinary experimental projects on specific issues such as sustainable mobility, the development of renewable energy and hydrogen, battery recycling, the study of new technologies for waste treatment and the recovery of materials and energy, for a total of 5 million.

At the same time, the partnership will give rise to a Joint Research and Innovation Centre inside the Innovation District, which Politecnico di Milano is developing at the former Bovisa gasometer park and in which A2A will take part with a total investment of 3 million euros. The Joint Centre will be entirely dedicated to innovation in the following thematic macro-areas: “Technologies for the environment and energy” and “Technologies for sustainable mobility”, also touching on the themes of energy transition and the circular economy.

The JRC – Joint Research Center has proven to be one of the most valid tools for strengthening the understanding between universities and business.

The agreement was signed by the Rector of the Politecnico, Ferruccio Resta, and by Renato Mazzoncini, CEO of A2A, in the presence of the President of A2A, Marco Patuano, the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala and the President of Regione Lombardia, Attilio Fontana.

The JRC – Joint Research Center has proven to be one of the most valid tools for strengthening the understanding between universities and business. For activating an ever closer synergy on topics of common interest and to meet the challenges that the NRRP poses to Italy: from energy transition, to sustainable mobility, and renewable energy. These are some of the objectives of the agreement which sees Politecnico di Milano working alongside A2A. One of the companies most actively encouraging this path of shared growth. Ready to support joint research from an open supply chain perspective. This agreement in fact represents a shared desire to create a real ecosystem of innovation that goes beyond applied research projects to the development of a flagship project on which the Politecnico will focus in the coming years.
Ferruccio Resta, rector of the Politecnico di Milano

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+

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.

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.

Autonomous space surfing satellites

Posted on 10/07/202106/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Tag: orbital dynamics, space surfing
Researcher: Camilla Colombo
Department: DAER – Department of Aerospace Science and Technology

The motion of objects in space is governed by the gravity of the primary body (i.e., the Sun or the central planet or Moon), but it is also strongly influenced by natural forces such as atmospheric drag solar radiation pressure, third body effect and so on. Such orbit perturbations are responsible for the trajectory divergence of an orbiting object. In case of a spaceship, for example, this increases the requirements for orbit control. In the conventional models for orbit propagation, these external forces are seen as perturbations that need to be counteracted by orbit manoeuvres, thus increasing fuel requirements.

ERC project COMPASS, funded with 1.500.000 € under the Horizon2020 scheme, represents a breakthrough in the current space mission design philosophy: from counteracting disturbances, to exploiting natural and artificial perturbations. Researchers studied how to leverage the dynamics of natural orbit perturbations to develop novel techniques for orbit manoeuvring by “surfing” through orbit perturbations.

The first goal of COMPASS is to investigate the orbital dynamics in planetary and interplanetary missions in presence of perturbations through numerical, semi-analytical and analytical approaches, considering both natural orbit perturbations and artificial accelerations. The second goal is to study the dynamics of perturbations in the phase-space of the orbital elements through Hamiltonian dynamics and perturbation methods.

Researchers also considered the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project. The potential impact of the COMPASS project will be to significantly reduce the current extremely high space mission costs and risks. This will create new opportunities for space exploration and exploitation, and space debris mitigation, thus increasing the services that spacecraft can offer to society, such as the monitoring of our planets, weather forecast, global positioning and navigation, global internet, telecommunications. The COMPASS methodology also aimed at engineering the natural effects through optimisation to obtain useful space applications such as satellite end-of-life disposal and orbit raising and to enhance the conventional techniques for modelling the relative motion.

COMPASS is a project based in Politecnico di Milano and benefits from an extensive international network, including the ESA, NASA, JAXA, CNES, and the UK space agency.

Cover Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Faster and sustainable Artificial Intelligence: Politecnico develops a new generation of computing

Posted on 13/06/202111/10/2021 by admin

Tag: resistive memory (ReRAM), resistive switching, computing circuits, memristore
Researcher: Daniele Ielmini
Department: DEIB

Researchers at Politecnico di Milano produced a novel in-memory computing architecture for a new generation of computing accelerators, with the potential to revolutionize the technology of artificial intelligence. Computers produced with this technology will offer greater functionalities and will be able to bypass the memory wall issue of digital computers. Compared with traditional CMOS technology, the new computers will be smaller, with less power consumption and will offer more functionalities, for example the capacity, such as the human brain’s ability to learn and recognize images.

The realized circuit is able to solve a system of linear equations (Ax=b) in a single operation in the timescale of few tens of ns thanks to an innovative method of in-memory computing, where the coefficients of matrix A are stored in a special device called memristor. The memristor is able to store analogue values, thus a memristor matrix can physically map a coefficient matrix A within the circuit, thus strongly accelerating the computation.

The proposed analogue in-memory concept is not only able to solve complex problems with huge saving in time and energy spending but has a lot of future applications, from the Internet of Things (IoT), to neuromorphic processors for artificial intelligence. The research has been carried out under the ERC European project RESCUE (Resistive switch computing beyond CMOS), of which Politecnico di Milano is the coordinating institution under the guidance of Professor Daniele Ielmini. The project was concluded in July 2020. Results have been published on the prestigious journal PNAS of the National Academy of Science of the USA.

Learn more

RESCUE Website

Photo by Alexandre Debiève on Unsplash

From “Black Box” to “Glass Box”: a humancentric Artificial Intelligence

Posted on 12/06/202111/10/2021 by admin

Tag: black-box effect, machine learning, deep learning, decision-making, Explainable AI (XAI)
Researcher: Marco Taisch
Department: DIG

Artificial intelligence will have a predominant importance in the future, making decisions that will have a considerable impact in everyday life.

Project XMANAI, under the Horizon 2020 scheme, started in November 2020 with Politecnico di Milano as one of the main collaborator: the project involves universities and research centers as well as industrial partners, such as Txt E-Solutions, Whirlpool Emea, Cnh Industrial e Deep Blue. XMANAI stands for ‘Explainable Manufacturing Artificial Intelligence’: its aim is to explain how Artificial Intelligence can be of assistance for manufacturing and of service for society while respecting European values and principles.

This is important as the decision-making process by AI is not always visible or understandable: this is also known as the ‘black box effect’, where the machine learning/deep learning algorithms are not explainable once they are computed, which raises fears of biases and mistakes among manufacturers and among the general public. Explainable AI (XAI) is an emerging field that aims at solving this issue by inspecting and attempting to understand the steps and models involved in decision making by Artificial Intelligence.

The project, taking into consideration 4 real-life cases in which Artificial Intelligence has had a positive impact on manufacturing, aims at changing the way AI is adopted by switching to a ‘glass box’ AI model, that keeps humans in the loop of the decision making process and that produces value-based explanations for manufacturers.

Learn more

What happens within molecules immediately after interaction with light?

Posted on 06/06/202111/10/2021 by admin

Tag: light-matter interaction, attosecond, Molecular electronics
Researcher: Mauro Nisoli
Department: DFIS – Department of Physics

Prof. Mauro Nisoli (Department of Physics, Head of the Attosecond Research Center at Politecnico di Milano), along with Fernando Martín (IMDEA and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and Nazario Martín (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), have been awarded an ERC Synergy Grant for the TOMATTO project (the ultimate time scale in organic molecular opto-electronics, the attosecond).

Researchers will explore what happens within individual molecules immediately after interaction with light. This is uncharted territory, since light triggers events that are not easily accessible, happening as they do in extremely short time scales, in the order of attoseconds. The goal here is to study and – possibly – control the light-induced motion of electrons in molecules with an unprecedented temporal resolution; researchers also aim to understand how the interaction with light is influenced by the molecular structure, in order to alter this structure according to a specific design.

This project brings together skills and competences from different research centers and universities. The research, coordinated by a team of experts in laser technologies, is the synthesis of new organic materials and computational methods. The team in Politecnico di Milano will focus on the experimental validation of theoretical work using latest generation instruments. The end goal is to engineer the molecular response to be able to produce materials with improved opto-electronic characteristics.

TOMATTO will be funded by an ERC Synergy Grant under the Horizon 2020 scheme and will receive almost 12 million Euro of funding over 6 years. Of these, 5 million will be allocated to Politecnico di Milano.