1st EDITION OF THE BEST Ph.D. THESIS AWARD IN MEMORY OF EMILIO GATTI AND FRANCO MANFREDI

The Italy Chapter of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Society is pleased to announce the first edition of the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award in memory of Emilio Gatti and Franco Manfredi. The award will be presented to distinguished young scientists who have completed a Ph.D. thesis in the field of Radiation Instrumentation for fundamental and applied research. The prize consists of 500 Euros and a Certificate.

Each year certificates will be also awarded to the two runners-up and will be awarded at an IEEE NPS Italy Chapter event.

Eligible Ph. D must be member of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Society at the time of application, have either completed their Ph.D. in an Italian University or be Italian citizens who have completed their Ph.D. in a foreign University and have defended their Ph.D. thesis in the period May 1st, 2014 – April 30th, 2017.

Nominees will be judged by September 30th, 2017 by a Panel of three experts in the field of radiation instrumentation, to be appointed by the Executive Committee of the IEEE NPS Italy Chapter, on the basis of their CV, PhD thesis and publications. The deadline for nomination is June 30th, 2017.

All details for nomination and on the Emilio Gatti and Franco Manfredi Best Ph.D. Thesis Award in Radiation Instrumentation can be found on the award website: http://www.npss.polimi.it/GattiManfrediAward/

The Executive Committee of the IEEE NPS Italy Chapter:
Gian-Franco Dalla Betta, IEEE NPS Italy Chapter Chair
Chiara Guazzoni, IEEE NPS Italy Chapter Vice-Chair
Lodovico Ratti, IEEE NPS Italy Chapter Secretary

Young Researchers Win TraCED International Challenge

Giovanni Savini (PhD student c/o the Department of Physics, Università degli studi di Milano) and Fulvia Palesi (Researcher c/o the Department of Physics, Università degli studi di Pavia) won the important international challenge “TraCED” organized by the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM). The challenge focused on the reconstruction of cerebral connections starting from magnetic resonance data. The two researchers submitted an original and innovative method for the reconstruction of tracts connecting cerebral regions (tractography) working with enthusiasm, creativity and commitment to research and proving international competitiveness. This research project is being developed within a collaboration between the Università degli studi di Milano (Prof. Alessandro Lascialfari) and the Brain Connectivity Center in Pavia (Prof. Claudia Gandini and Prof. Egidio d’Angelo).
38 teams from all over the world joined the challenge, but only 9 were able to complete the task and a total of 46 different algorithms were submitted. The one proposed by Savini and Palesi resulted the best on the basis of thorough evaluations.
Moreover, the young researchers distinguished themselves for their innovative scientific research at the ISMRM annual meeting in the USA. In particular, one of the submitted works, developed and presented by Giovanni Savini, won the “Summa cum Laude” award given to the best 5% of all accepted abstracts (over 5600).

First picture: the winner team, Savini (at the center with the trophy) and Palesi (on the left). Following pictures: images from their work.

Salvini1

Salvini2

Salvini3

ColOpt – 15 PhD positions are available

The European Training Network ColOpt (Collective effects and optomechanics in ultra-cold matter) is inviting applications of highly qualified and ambitious early state researchers for three year research or research & development projects. In total 15 positions are available at 12 partners. Candidates hosted at university nodes are expected to participate in the PhD programme of their host institution.

For more details see at http://colopt.phys.strath.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ESR_advert-network_umbrella_ad.pdf or contact Nicola Piovella nicola.piovella@unimi.it (deadline 01/04/2017).

New source of matter antimatter asymmetry

For the first time the LHCb experiment at CERN has measured an asymmetry between baryonic matter and antimatter. Baryons are particles composed of three quarks as the protons and neutrons that constitutes the matter that we know. Such asymmetries have been measured in the past in the decays of particles composed of two quarks (quark and anti-quark) called K and B mesons, but were never observed in the decay of any baryon. The study of  matter antimatter asymmetries is crucial to answer questions on the evolution of the Universe and in particular how it was possible to reach a state of complete absence of antimatter, if at the the origin matter and antimatter were produced in equal amount, as required by the Big Bang theory.

LHCb

To perform this measurement at CERN were isolated for the first time about 6000 events of rare decays of Lambda-b baryons- particles about 6 times heavier than the neutron, due to the fact that contain a heavy quark called “bottom” – into a proton and 3 pions. Nicola Neri (researcher at INFN Milan) and his research team conducted the study now published in Nature Physics. According to Neri it is a first evidence that must be confirmed with more data but that would open new research opportunities: “LHCb has the ability to measure precisely asymmetries between matter and antimatter even in heavy baryons processes and it will be even more in future after the upgrade of the LHCb detector”. The LHCb group at INFN Milano led by Neri is responsible for the construction of the new silicon tracker to allow to collect a larger amount of data and possibly answer many questions still open on the evolution of the Universe.

Additional reading:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys4021.html
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/01/new-source-asymmetry-between-matter-and-antimatter

Physics Colloquia 2016-2017

Schedule: General Poster

Laura Cadonati
The discovery of gravitational waves in Advanced LIGO.
Date: 17/01/2017
Topic: Gravitational waves.
Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology (GA-USA)

Leonardo Testi
Science with ALMA: the cool side of the universe.
Date: 14/02/2017
Topic: Submm astrophysics in the ALMA era
Affiliation: ESO (DEU)

Gabriel Martinez Pinedo
Explosive nucleosynthesis of heavy elements: an astrophysical and nuclear physics challenge.
Date: 14/03/2017
Topic: Nuclear astrophysics
Affiliation: Technische Universität Darmstadt (DEU)

Björn Hof
Directed percolation transition to turbulence.
Date: 04/04/2017
Topic: Non-equilibrium dynamics in fluids
Affiliation: Institute of Science and Technology (AUT)

Fabio Zwirner
New horizons in particle physics after the Higgs boson discovery.
Date: 16/05/2017
Topic: After the Higgs boson discovery
Affiliation: Università degli Studi di Padova (ITA)

Sabrina Maniscalco
Quantum probes for complex systems.
Date: 30/05/2017
Topic: Quantum information probes
Affiliation: University of Turku (FIN)