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2019:A Year in Review

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2019: A Year in Review

2019: A Year in Review

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics

Compiled by the ICTP Public Information Office

Designed by Jordan Chatwin

Pictograms created by Flatart from the Noun Project

Photos:

Roberto Barnabà, ICTP Photo Archives, with the exception of:

P.10: Photo credit unknown

P.12: Basudeb Dasgupta and Suvrat Raju

P.13: Photo credits for Viatcheslav Mukhanov, Alexei Starobinsky and Rashid

Sunyaev unknown

P. 21: Paola di Bella

P. 22-23: MCTP, ICTP -SAIFR, ICTP-EAIFR, ICTP-AP

P. 24: Photo credit (top): Joe Niemela, (bottom): PWF

Print: Grafica Goriziana sas

Public Information Office

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)

Strada Costiera, 11 I – 34151 Trieste Italy

e-mail: pio@ictp.it

www.ictp.it

ISSN 1020–7007

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Contents

Foreword 4

Introducing ICTP's New Director 6

ICTP Research 8

Awarding Scientific Excellence 12

A Hub for Global Scientific Excellence 14

ICTP Impact 16

Education and Training 18

Partner Institutes 22

Outreach 24

Supporting Gender Parity in Science 26

Governance 29

Donors 30

Scientific and Administrative Staff, 2019 31

Scientific Publication Highlights, 2019 34

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In November 2019, ICTP bid a fond farewell to its director of 10 years, Fernando Queve-do.

In many ways, Quevedo represents the type of scientist Abdus Salam had in mind when the Nobel Laureate founded the Cen-tre in 1964. Coming from a disadvantaged country in Latin America (Guatemala), Quevedo overcame tremendous odds to reach career milestones that would even-tually lead to his appointment as a pro-fessor at Cambridge University, UK, and as director of ICTP. He is a well-known theo-retical particle physicist with wide-rang-ing research interests in string theory, phenomenology and cosmology. He was awarded the 1998 ICTP Prize in recognition of his important contributions to super-string theory.

Quevedo often points to Salam as an inspi-ration not only for his scientific pursuits in theoretical physics, but also for his vision of how ICTP’s unique mission can transform the lives of scientists in the developing world. “Abdus Salam has always been a role model for me since, more than any other scientist, he dedicated his life to scientific research of the highest quality while at the same time helping to improve the level of science in the developing world.”

During his directorship, Quevedo oversaw ICTP’s transformation as a destination for students pursuing masters and PhD de-grees, thanks to the establishment of joint programmes with local universities. The Centre expanded its geographical reach with the opening of four partner institutes on three continents. Responding to the needs of developing countries, ICTP has launched new research initiatives in areas such as renewable energies and scientific computing. In addition, the Centre started

Foreword

a new research section in Quantitative Life Sciences, reflecting ICTP’s acknowledge-ment of the importance of multidisciplinary research.

“I arrived ten years ago full of passion and dreams about making an important con-tribution to society by leading this unique institution,” said Quevedo in an interview published just before his departure. He added, “I have experienced many endearing moments witnessing the impact that ICTP has had on the careers of scientists from all corners of the world. My own career path was made possible by the intellectu-al generosity of the international science community. Directing ICTP was, for me, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pay back and support many scientists from coun-tries like mine that have little or no support for science.”

Quevedo has resumed his research and teaching duties at Cambridge.

ICTP Director Fernando

Quevedo (centre, with

his wife Elisa) posing

with the ICTP community

at a farewell ceremony

in his honour

Fa

rewell

toDirector Quevedo

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Introducing ICTP’s New Director

Atish Dabholkar, a theoretical physicist from India, has been appointed as ICTP’s next director. Dabholkar took up his new duties in November 2019.

“It’s a great honour and responsibility to be chosen as ICTP’s next director,” said Dab-holkar. “ICTP is a dynamic organization with a very high level of research and a unique global mission for international cooperation through science. It was envisioned as an in-ternational hub for excellence in science and as an anchor for building scientific capacity and a culture of science around the globe. This vision remains valid today, more than 50 years since its founding, but requires flexibili-ty to meet changing realities and priorities.”

Dabholkar is well-known for his research on string theory and quantum black holes, including investigations that build on ICTP founder Abdus Salam’s Nobel-winning work on electroweak unification. Born in 1963 in India, he is a graduate of the Indian In-stitute of Technology at Kanpur, one of India’s premier educational institutes. He earned a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University, followed by post-doctoral and research positions at Rutgers University, Harvard University and the Cal-ifornia Institute of Technology. Until 2010, he was a professor of theoretical physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Re-search in Mumbai, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University and a vis-iting scientist at CERN. He joined ICTP in 2014 on secondment from Sorbonne Uni-versité and the National Center for Scien-tific Research (CNRS), where he has been a research director since 2007. Prior to his appointment as ICTP Director, Dabholkar was head of the Centre’s High Energy, Cos-mology and Astroparticle Physics section.

He has received many honours, includ-ing the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award

(2006), the most prestigious national sci-ence prize awarded by the Indian Prime Minister, for his “outstanding contribu-tions for establishing how quantum theo-ry modifies the entropy of black holes and his pioneering studies of supersymmetric solitons in string theory”. He is an elected member of the Indian Academy of Scienc-es, and in 2007 received the Chair of Ex-cellence award from the National Research Agency (ANR) in France.

Reflecting on the success of ICTP, Dabhol-kar said, “What has been achieved here is a very non-trivial thing: to have world-class infrastructure but at the same time be cognizant of the challenges facing science in the developing world.” Dabholkar grew up in a small village in India and has inter-acted with a whole cross-section of people from different backgrounds. “I can really understand what kind of challenges a per-son coming from a disadvantaged back-ground has to face to even get started in science, and if one can change it in small ways it is a big thing,” he said.

Dabholkar’s appointment comes at a time of expansion for ICTP. Over the past 10 years, former Director Fernando Quevedo reinforced ICTP’s commitment and contri-bution to world-class theoretical physics research by hiring more researchers and creating new research initiatives in quanti-tative life sciences, high performance com-puting, renewable energies and quantum technology. In addition, ICTP has increased its presence in the developing world with the opening of four partner institutes in Brazil, China, Mexico and Rwanda.

“Directing ICTP is a once in a lifetime oppor-tunity due to its unique mission and its big impact in developing countries. I am glad to be leaving the institute in very good hands,” said Quevedo.

Meet ICTP’s New Director

Name: Atish Dabholkar (अतीश दाभोलकर)Country of Origin: IndiaEducation: Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur; Princeton UniversityResearch Interests: string theory, quantum black holes

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4747Number of countries represented by ICTP researchers

ICTP’s quality researchMore than 75% of ICTP research is published in the most-cited physics journals, an indication of the quality of ICTP research (pie chart shows portion in most-cited (Q1) to least-cited journals)

ICTP Research in Numbers 2019

Region of Origin, ICTP Researchers

56%DevelopedCountries

40%DevelopingCountries

78%Q1

14%Q2

6%Q3 2%

Q4

4%Least

Developed Countries

177177Number of researchers Staff, consultants, longterm visiting scientists,postdoctoral fellows

Number of papers produced within ICTP

Total number of citationsof ICTP papers

ICTP is proud of its long research tradition, which began in 1964 when Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam founded the centre. Over the decades, ICTP has stayed true to its roots, maintaining a strong presence of theoretical physics research. At the same time, the Centre has had the foresight to branch out into new research areas that address key sustainability concerns, such as Earth system physics and renewable energy, as well as fields that encourage a multidisciplinary approach, such as those explored by its Quantitative Life Sciences section.

ICTP’s unique strength lies in its ability to bring together large numbers of gifted scientists from developing and developed countries to participate in joint research. From its early focus on theoretical high energy physics, the Centre’s research areas have evolved in response to the needs of physicists and mathematicians from the developing world, and now include the following areas.

ICTP Research

CMSPStrange and unexpected behaviours may emerge when large numbers of particles collect together. Research-ers in the Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics (CMSP) section at ICTP are tackling this challenging realm with a variety of analytical and numerical techniques, with a particu-lar focus on the development of new methods of numerical simulation.

MathematicsICTP’s Mathematics section empha-sizes two core functions: the creation of new mathematical knowledge and its global dissemination, in particular to developing countries. Research by ICTP’s mathematicians reflects the im-portant synergy between mathemat-ics and physics, as well as the role of mathematics in driving the rapid de-velopment of technological advances.

Applied PhysicsFrom archaeology to X-ray imaging, and from optics and lasers to satellite navigation and turbulent fluid flows, ICTP’s Applied Physics section encompasses diverse areas of research that respond to the most critical needs of the ICTP scientific community. The areas are, in fact, among the activities for which the demand in developing countries is enormous and growing.

ESPUnderstanding the various compo-nents of the Earth system, including their interactions and processes, forms the basis of research by ICTP’s Earth System Physics section (ESP). From building and using models of climate change and its impacts to deciphering the mechanics of earthquakes and volcanoes, ESP research covers a wide spectrum.

QLSScientists in ICTP’s Quantitative Life Sciences (QLS) section are uncov-ering the underlying physics in the broad domain of life sciences that encompasses disciplines ranging from molecular and cell biology to terrestrial and oceanic ecology, and economics and quantitative finance.

HECAPThe High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (HECAP) section at ICTP is studying some of the most exciting areas in physics today, from string theory to physics at large energy colliders, from neutrino phenomenology to alternative cosmologies.

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ICTP was selected as a centre of excellence by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. Under the ITU’s capacity building initiative known as the ITU Academy, ICTP offers training in the fields of Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data and Statistics. These fields are now of strong interest not only in industrialized countries but also in the developing world, as they can provide valuable applications to address the Sustainable Development Goals. ICTP and the ITU share a long history of training for developing countries. Through ICTP’s Telecommunications/ICT for Development (T/ICT4D) unit, ICTP has organized educational activities on state-of-the-art wireless technologies, including

IoT. ICTP focusses on using wireless solutions to help the development of academic networks in emerging regions of the world. In the last few years, ICTP has organized more than 30 workshops on IoT both at ICTP and in developing countries.

In an important, innovative development for its host city of Trieste, ICTP joined forces with the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) and the University of Trieste to launch a new institute dedicated to the study of quantum technologies. The Trieste Institute for the Theory of Quantum Technologies (TQT) is an international centre of research excellence, serving as a catalyst for theoretical activities not only in Italy, but also in neighbouring and developing countries. The institute offers conferences and schools in the field of quantum technologies,

with high-level training and expertise. The aim is to promote collaboration between Italian and foreign scholars, both junior and senior, in order to enhance interdisciplinarity and innovation and maximize international impact.

Luciano Maiani, chairperson of ICTP’s Scientific Council and former CERN Director General, was awarded Honorary Membership of the European Physical Society for his exceptional scientific contributions to elementary particle physics and outstanding achievements in the leadership of Italian and international scientific institutions.

Renato Padovani, coordinator of ICTP’s Master of Advanced Studies in Medical Physics, was awarded the International Day of Medical Physics Award by the International Organization for Medical Physics. The award recognises excellence in medical physics with a particular

ICTP researcher Ermanno Pietrosemoli (second from right) at a 2019 T/ICT4D workshop in Uganda. Such activities are what prompted the ITU to designate ICTP an IoT Centre of Excellence.

Research Achievements 2019

view of promoting medical physics to a larger audience and highlighting the contributions medical physicists make to patient care.

Sandro Radicella, head of ICTP’s Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory, received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. Since 1989, he has organized and carried out colleges, schools and workshops in aeronomy, space sciences and telecommunications, training more than 2800 young scientists and university professors from developing countries.

Trivandrum Ramakrishnan Ramadas, former head of ICTP’s Mathematics section, and Gang Tian, a current member of ICTP’s Scientific Council, were elected as two of six members-at-large of the International Mathematical Union’s Executive Committee. Ramadas led ICTP’s maths activities from 2008 to 2013, while Tian has served on ICTP’s Scientific Council since 2010.

Juan Maldacena, renowned theoretical physicist and a member of ICTP’s Scientific Council, has been awarded the inaugural Galileo Galilei Medal by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in collaboration with the Galileo Galilei Institute (GGI) of Florence. The award cites Maldacena’s “pioneering ideas in theoretical physics, and in particular for the discovery of duality between gravity and quantum field theory, with far-reaching implications”.

ICTP Research Staff Associate Alexander A. Nersesyan has been elected as a full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Georgia. Nersesyan has been an ICTP staff associate since 1998.

Ingrid Daubechies, who serves on ICTP’s Scientific Council, and Karen Hallberg, an ICTP Senior Associate, were among the laureates of the 2019 L’Oréal-UNESCO International Awards for Women in Science. Ingrid Daubechies is a professor of mathematics and electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, USA. She was the first woman to lead the International Mathematical Union, as well as the first woman to achieve the ranking

of full professor at Princeton University. She has been a member of ICTP’s Scientific Council since 2016. Karen Hallberg is a professor of condensed matter physics at the Balseiro Institute and Research Director at the Bariloche Atomic Centre in Argentina.

Pedro Vieira, a researcher with the South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), ICTP’s partner institute in Brazil, has been awarded a prestigious New Horizons Prize for Early-Career Achievements in Physics. The prize is awarded annually by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, which also awards its namesake prize given to the world’s top scientists. Vieira, who has a joint appointment with the Perimeter Institute in Canada, was cited for profound contributions to the understanding of quantum field theory.

Erio Tosatti, a co-founder of ICTP’s Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics section, has received recognition for his achievements from two prestigious science academies. In a ceremony on 8 November, Tosatti was inducted as a national member of Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. In addition, he was appointed as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

From left: Trieste Uni-versity Rector Maurizio Fermeglia, SISSA Direc-tor Stefano Ruffo and ICTP Director Fernando Quevedo at the signing of the agreement for the Trieste Institute for the Theory of Quantum Technologies

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His new ideas on the subject improved our understanding of the possible nature and properties of this obscure form of matter.

Raju was cited for his new insights into the holographic description of black-hole interiors, for clarifying the nature of subtle non-local effects in quantum gravity, and for contributions to the study of the AdS/CFT correspondence. His work on black holes provided a deeper and more detailed description of how the intrinsic non-locality of gravity could preserve unitarity during the black-hole evaporation process, shedding new light on the long-standing black-hole information paradox. He also helped to develop a new set of tools and concepts that extend to conformal field theories, holographic correspondence, quantum error corrections, and algebraic quantum field theory.

ICTP Prizes andMedals 2019:Awarding ScientificExcellence

Two theoretical physicists from India shared the 2019 ICTP Prize for their work in high energy physics: Basudeb Dasgupta, of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, and Suvrat Raju, of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru.

Dasgupta was recognised for his innovative theoretical contributions to neutrino and dark-matter physics, especially to the understanding of collective neutrino oscillations. Dasgupta pioneered the field of collective neutrino flavor evolution in extreme astrophysical environments, such as those in supernovae, which helped the understanding of these spectacular and phenomenologically rich events. His works on dark matter, the dominant but yet unidentified component of matter in the universe, produced crucial input for the interpretation of ongoing direct search experiments.

ICTP Dirac Medal

ICTP awarded its 2019 Dirac Medal and Prize to three physicists whose research has made a profound impact on modern cosmology. Viatcheslav Mukhanov (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), Alexei Starobinsky (Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics) and Rashid Sunyaev (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) share the prize for “their outstanding contribu-tions to the physics of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with experimentally tested impli-cations that have helped to trans-form cosmology into a precision scientific discipline by combining microscopic physics with the large scale structure of the universe”. All three winners have made important contributions to the understanding of the early universe in the con-text of inflationary cosmology.

Alexei Starobinsky was one of the first developers of the cosmic in-flation theory in the late 1970s. The

ICTP Prize 2019

ICTP Prize 2019 recipients Suvrat Raju (left) and Basudeb Dasgupta

International Commission for Optics/ICTP Gallieno Denardo Award

ICTP and the International Commission for Optics (ICO) awarded their 2019 ICO/ICTP Gallieno Denardo Award to two researchers: Muhammad Faryad of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan, and Christian Tomas Schmiegelow of the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina. The award for Faryad cites “his contributions to the understanding of light interaction with nanostructured materials, and applications in the area of optical surface waves, solar cells, optical metamaterials and the

modelling of wave propagation in the nanostructured mediums”. Faryad is an assistant professor in LUMS’ Department of Physics. Schmiegelow received the ICO/ICTP Prize for “his contributions to the field of quantum optics and light-matter interaction, and in particular the demonstration of transfer of optical orbital momentum to bound electrons and studies on interaction of twisted light with trapped ions”. He has joint appointments as a researcher at CONICET (Argentina’s National Research Council) and as a professor in the Department of Physics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

2019 Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries

ICTP awarded the 2019 Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries to Hoàng Hiêp Pham of the Institute of Mathematics-Vietnam Acade-my of Science and Technology in Hanoi. The prize is in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of complex analysis, and

in particular to pluripo-tential theory, where he obtained an important result on the singularities of plurisubharmonic func-tions; and complex Mon-ge-Ampère equations and log canonical thresholds, which have important applications in algebra-ic and complex Kähler geometry. The prize is also in recognition of Pham’s important organizational role in the advancement of mathematics in his home country, Vietnam. ICTP administers the Ramanujan Prize jointly with the Department of Science and Technology (DST, Government of In-dia), and the International Mathematical Union (IMU).

theory was then further devel-oped, with great contributions from the studies that Viatcheslav Mukhanov and others carried out in the 1980s. Rashid Sunyaev had pre-dicted the acoustic peaks of the CMB in the 1970s and then largely contributed to the experiments that tested these models. The the-ory of inflation is now considered one of the most relevant devel-opments in fundamental physics and cosmology, since it explains many properties of the universe as we know it, such as its uniformity and its flatness. It also provides a theory for primordial fluctuations that no other model has yet explained. In the framework of general relativity and quantum field theory, the infla-tionary theory describes these fluctuations as coming from quantum effects at a microscopic scale, that have mac-roscopic effects on a cosmic scale, manifest in the formation of the large-scale structure of the universe. The theoretical predictions derived from this model have been confirmed by several experiments, and have contributed greatly to modern cosmology.

2019 Ramanujan Prize winner Hoàng Hiêp Pham

The 2019 ICO/ICTP Gallieno Denar-do Award went to Christian Tomas Schmiegelow (left) and Muham-mad Faryad

Recipients of the 2019 ICTP Dirac Medal (from top) Viatcheslav Mukhanov, Alexei Starobinsky and Rashid Sunyaev

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ICTP: A Hub for Global Scientific Excellence Why do scientists from around the world come to ICTP? The reasons are many: to participate in the annual programme of high-level conferences; to meet in person some of the world’s top physicists; to form an interna-tional network of collaborators. Since ICTP’s opening in 1964, about 150,000 scientists from 188 countries have participated in ICTP programmes, including more than a hundred Nobel Laureates. For those who can’t come to its Trieste campus, ICTP also organizes activ-ities throughout the developing world, including at its partner institutes in Brazil, China, Mexico and Rwanda.

Scientists also visit ICTP to congratulate the winners of its yearly prizes and medals, most of which are given to top physicists and mathematicians from developing countries. Its Dirac Medal, one of the most prestigious medals in the field of theoretical physics, can be considered as a barometer for future success: five medallists have proceeded to win Physics Nobel Prizes.

ICTP Activities in Numbers, 2019

5942 146

28%

67

17

scientific visitors in 2019

nations represented

of visitors were women

conferences, schools and workshops

training activities in developing countries

QLS

164

Participants

67.67

Person-months

MATH

510

143.55

HECAP

603

156.56

HPC

204

62.93

ESP

583

180.07

CMSP

1403

300.87

AP

1811

352.61

Attendance at ICTP Conferences, Workshops and Schools by Field, 2019

1500

1250

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1750

Budinich Lecture HallLeonardo Building, ICTP

Monday 4 November 2019 at 16.30

Petra RudolfUniversity of Groningen

The Netherlands

ICTP COLLOQUIA 2019

Molecular Motors and Switches at Surfaces

Professor

Distinguished Visitors 2019

01. Juan MaldacenaICTP’s Salam Distinguished Lecture Series, held annually in January to correspond with founder Abdus Salam’s birthday, featured renowned physicist Juan Maldacena for its 2019 edition. Maldacena, of the Institute for Advanced Study, has made a major contribution to our understanding of the quantum physics of black holes. In 1997, he was the first to propose a fundamental relationship between the two most important theories in modern physics: quantum field theory and quantum gravity. His work also extends into other branches of theoretical physics. For example, in 2003 he proved that cosmic background radiation must contain a very specific signature that supports the inflationary models of the creation of the universe. His Salam lectures covered quantum mechanics and the geometry of spacetime, and toy models for black holes.

02. Ignacio CiracAt the launch of its joint Trieste Institute for the Theory of Quantum Technologies, ICTP hosted an inaugural lecture by quantum computing pioneer Ignacio Cirac of the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics. In his talk, titled “Quantum Simulations and the difficultly of solving Quantum many-body systems”, he presented how quantum computers or analog quantum simulators could perform simulations of quantum many-body systems in a much more efficient way.

04. Sandrine Bony, Kerry Emanuel & Bjorn StevensThree leading climate experts addressed extreme climate change at a public event organized by ICTP. Titled “Clouds, Extreme Weather, Global Warming: What is Happening to our Climate?”, the event gave the general public an opportunity to see how the world’s top climate researchers study our climate and what those studies tell us about our current and future climate. Speakers included Sandrine Bony, a senior scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research; Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Bjorn Stevens, a director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology. The talks came at a time of heightened public awareness of climate change along with collective calls for action.

03. Petra RudolfThrough a lecture at ICTP on “Molecular Motors and Switches at Surfaces”, European Physical Society president Petra Rudolf offered the Centre’s scientific community a look at nano-engines and molecular motors, which form the basis of nearly every important biological process. In contrast, she pointed out, all of mankind’s present day technologies function exclusively through their static or equilibrium properties. One can therefore easily anticipate that the controlled movement of molecules or parts of molecules offers unprecedented technological possibilities for the future, according to Rudolf.

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ICTP Impact

ICTP supports research and training activities of physicists and mathematicians living and working in developing countries, primarily by providing assistance for activities organized locally. Such support complements the training and research that is provided to developing-country scientists at ICTP. Our goal is to boost the scientific level of individuals, groups or institutes in developing countries to an international level through North-South collaboration, and to stimulate networking of scientists in the developing regions to reach a critical mass of researchers through South-South collaboration.

ICTP also provides funds for graduate schools to support student grants, fellowships for young researchers, visits of research collaborators and other activities.

Assistance is coordinated by ICTP’s Office of External Activities (OEA), and is carried out through ICTP Affiliated Centres (there were 9 in 2019 in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America) through which ICTP directly supported 24 postdoctorate students. The OEA also supported 14 research group networks in 2019, as well as 75 scientific meetings and 19 visiting scholars and consultants.

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ICTP's Kate Shaw, head of the Physics Without Frontiers programme, teaching students at an activity in Kabul, Afghanistan

Photo credit:Kate Shaw

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Matteo Marsili, head of ICTP's Quantitative Life Sciences section, speaking at the ICTP-sponsored StatPhys 27 conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 2019

Photo credit: Claudio Esses, StatPhys27

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ICTP researcher Marcello Dalmonte (far left) visiting ICTP's partner institute, EAIFR, Kigali, Rwanda

Photo credit:Marcello Dalmonte

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Participants of ICTP's School on Biophysical Approaches to Macromolecules and Cells: Integrated Tools for Life Sciences and Medicine, Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania, September 2019

Photo credit: Catherine Kilinda

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ICTP Schools and Workshops 19

ICTP-OEA Affiliated Centres 09

ICTP-OEA  Networks 14

ICTP-OEA Scientific Meetings 75

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Participants of ICTP's School on Advances in Condensed Matter Physics: New Trends and Materials in Quantum Technologies, Samarkand, Uzbekistan, May 2019

Photo credit:Unknown

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Participants of ICTP's Workshop on Distilling Climate Information for Sectoral Applications, Manila, Philippines, December 2019

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Education & Training As an international crossroad of scientific excellence, ICTP offers a unique environment for scientists at all stages of their careers to advance their knowledge in physics and mathematics. From the Centre’s Postgraduate Diploma Programme, an intense, year-long course of study that gives young scientists from developing countries the boost they need for acceptance into doctoral programmes anywhere in the world, to the Centre’s Associates Scheme, which supports sabbatical visits of established scientists, ICTP provides a lifeline for a lifetime of learning.

Today, ICTP alumni can be found throughout the world, serving as science ambassadors in their home countries and sharing their knowledge with new generations of scientists.

For a detailed account of ICTP’s education and training programmes during 2019, please see our Full Technical Report at: www.ictp.it/media/1904371/ftr2019.pdf

1991–92

40

80

120

160

1995–96 2000–01 2005–06 2010–11 2015–16 2019–20*

Growth in ICTP Programmes and Enrollment

Postgraduate Diploma Students

ICTP-UniTS Joint Masters in Physics

ICTP-STEP Fellows’ visits

Joint PhD Programme, Earth Science and Fluid Mechanics

Master of Advanced Studies in Medical Physics

Master in High Performance Computing

Joint ICTP-SISSA PhD Programme in Physics and Mathematics

*Does not include Diploma students from academic year 2018-2019.

ICTP Education in 2019

171 59

309

students enrolled in masters, PhD, Diploma, and STEP programmes

countries represented (including 16 least-developed countries)

scientists from 53 countries engaged in career development programmes (Associates, TRIL, Affiliates, and Elettra)

ICTP’s Masters in Medical Physics (MMP) programme, run jointly with the University of Trieste, graduated its fifth class of students on 12 December, with

20 students from 18 countries presenting their thesis work, receiving their diplomas, and preparing to return to their home countries with extensive new knowledge.

Five ICTP Postgraduate Diploma Programme alumni have successfully completed their doctoral studies in the Joint ICTP-SISSA PhD Programme and have been awarded PhD degrees in physics and mathematics. The five students — Carlos Mauricio Nieto Guerrero of Colombia, Muhammad

Nawaz Qaisrani of Pakistan, Deepak Bahadur Karki of Nepal, William Daniel Montoya Catano of Colombia, and Alaa A. E. Elshorbagy of Egypt— join an expanding group of highly educated scientists from developing countries trained and nurtured by ICTP.

The ICTP Postgraduate Diploma Programme class of 2019 graduated on 29 August. Some 33 students from 22 countries received their

diplomas, after a long and intense year of learning and hard work. Four were singled out as the top students of their respective programmes:

+ Asem Abdelraouf (Egypt) studied mathematics and has been admitted to an MSc programme at University Paris Diderot;

+ Nicolas Loayza Romero (Ecuador) studied high energy, cosmology and astroparticle physics and will be attending an MSc programme at Bonn University;

+ Nishan Ranabhat (Nepal) studied condensed matter physics and was accepted into the joint ICTP/SISSA PhD programme;

+ John Bosco Ssebandeke (Uganda) studied Earth system physics and is extending his stay at ICTP to continue investigating the topic of his thesis.

Thanks to support from ICTP, two students from developing countries were among the graduating class of ICTP and SISSA’s joint master’s programme in High Performance Computing (MHPC). Both of the students have excelled at their studies. Alejandra Foggia of Argentina earned recognition for having the best

thesis, and presented her work in a lecture during the ceremony. Rajat Panda, from India, completed a thesis that led to a publication co-written by researchers from Harvard and the University of Geneva and submitted to the prestigious scientific journal Physical Review.

2019 graduation ceremony, ICTP's Postgraduate Diploma Programme

Graduates of ICTP's Masters in Medical Physics programme, December 2019

PhD graduates (from left) Deepak Bahadur Karki, Muhammad Nawaz Qaisrani, & William Daniel Montoya Catano. Not pictured: Alaa A. E. Elshorbagy & Carlos Mauricio Nieto Guerrero

ICTP researcher Marcello Dalmonte (left) with MHPC graduates Rajat Panda and Alejandra Foggia, MHPC applications specialist Ivan Girotto, ICTP Director Fernando Quevedo, and SISSA Director Stefano Ruffo

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ICTP recognizes that many students from developing countries lack the vigorous educational training needed to succeed in doctoral studies. Since 1991, the Centre’s Postgraduate Diploma Programme has addressed this need by offering an intense, 12-month course of study for talented young science students who have limited possibilities to pursue advanced studies in their home countries.

University destinations, Diploma graduates 2019

Auburn University

Berlin Mathematical School

Bonn University

Higher School of Economics Moscow

Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology

Northeastern University

Okinawa Institute of Science

and Technology Japan

Padova University

SISSA

Sorbonne University

Trieste University

University of the Basque Country

University of Geneva

University of Hamburg

University of Houston

University of Nebraska Lincoln

University of Paris Diderot

University of Strasbourg

University of Utah

Nica Jane Ferrer, Philippines, 2019 Postgraduate Diploma graduate

Spotlight on ICTP’s Postgraduate Diploma Programme

“ICTP lecturers are among the top researchers in their respective fields, and yet they chose to spend some of their time with us, students from developing countries, to help us improve and get a very good training to become good scientists.”

More than 900 students from 78 countries have graduated from the Programme; of these, 75% have gone on to attain doctoral degrees. For the academic year 2018-2019, 33 students from 22 developing countries completed the rigorous programme. Of those, 17 have enrolled in PhD programmes and 8 have enrolled in masters programmes.

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Mathematician Khadim War stud-ies chaos, searching for patterns in tangled systems. But his career is far from chaotic, as the ICTP alumnus has just been hired at the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Apli-cada (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a top mathematics research center. Not only was he hired, but he was offered a tenure track position, a serious achievement for any young scientist. “I’m very happy to have been hired,” War says, “I’ve been there many times, and it’s a perfect place in terms of my math interests.”

Those interests started back in middle school in Senegal, War’s na-tive country, where his older broth-ers were already excelling in sci-ence. “I started specializing in math and physics, and studied both fields at Gaston Berger Universi-ty in Saint-Louis, Senegal. But ca-reer-wise, I realized I wanted to do as much math as possible, not to go into an applied field like engineering,” says War. As the top student of his

Left: Postgraduate Diploma students enjoying a lecture by distinguished physicist Juan Maldacena at the 2019 Salam Lecture Series

class at a university where several professors regularly visited ICTP, he was encouraged to apply to ICTP’s Diploma Programme in mathematics.

War and his siblings grew up in a small village of about 500 people in the Louga region of Senegal, and their parents wanted them to do well in math and science. “My father wanted me to be a medical doctor,” War remembers, but his success has convinced his father that pure mathematics is also a good career.

“Now, my parents joke with each oth-er about who is responsible for my ability in math; each of them claims credit,” he laughs.

The autumn after graduating with his bachelor’s degree, War was headed to Trieste to start the 2011-2012 Diploma programme, where he excelled. He started working with ICTP mathematician Stefano Luz-zatto, who became his PhD advisor when he entered the joint ICTP-SIS-SA PhD programme after completing

A Star on the Rise:ICTP Alumnus Khadim War

the Diploma Programme. “Stefano was a great advisor,” War says, and the two remain collaborators, in the field of dynamical systems. IMPA, War’s new institute, has a rich cul-ture in the field, as does the region.

Those math interests center around chaos, “which is kind of like positive entropy,” War explains. The study of chaos first started with the modern-ization of weather forecasts, where patterns emerge from a vast amount of constantly changing variables, which in turn make it very difficult to precisely predict the weather.

“We’re trying to find some laws in the chaos by studying small perturba-tions in a system, or following only two points within a system,” War says.

“ICTP is a great place, it has been a great place for my career so far,” says War. “I am now very happy and proud to be moving to IMPA and Bra-zil.” And ICTP is very proud of him.

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ICTP Partner InstitutesRegional centres of excellence

ICTP has opened regional branches to bring its unique blend of high-quality physics and mathematics education and high-level science meetings closer to scientists in the developing world.

The ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR) has now completed its eighth year of theoretical physics activities in São Paulo as a collaboration between the São Paulo Research Funding Agency (FAPESP), ICTP, the São Paulo State University (UNESP), and the Instituto de Fisica Teorica (IFT-UNESP), in whose building it is located. Research at ICTP-SAIFR includes string theory, field theory, condensed matter, particle physics, cosmology, general relativity, astrophysics, complex systems, and mathematical biology. Researchers are also members of important international collaborations such as the CMS detector at the LHC, the LIGO and the Dark

Energy Survey collaborations. In 2019, ICTP-SAIFR welcomed more than 1,200 visitors and organized nine international schools on topics ranging from data science to high energy astrophysics. In addition, ICTP-SAIFR held nine workshops on a variety of subjects including QCD and quantum symmetries. In 2019, ICTP-SAIFR considerably expanded its outreach activities with the help of a generous donation from the private Serrapilheira Institute to hire two outreach coordinators. The main outreach activity involves a partnership with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada and is aimed at high-school physics teachers and students.

01A workshop at MCTP

02Theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena giving a lecture at ICTP-SAIFR

MCTP

The Mesoamerican Centre for Theoretical Physics (MCTP) was created in collaboration between ICTP and the Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas (UNACH) in order to establish a regional headquarters of the ICTP in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

The MCTP coordinates international-level research in physics, mathematics, energy and the environment. It offers certified courses in physics and mathematics, workshops, congresses and other events for the benefit of the Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean region. In 2019, MCTP organized 24 conferences, workshops, seminars and colloquia that attracted 1,654 participants from 14 countries.

ICTP-SAIFR

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Inaugurated in 2018, the ICTP-East African Institute of Fundamental Research (EAIFR), based at the University of Rwanda’s Kigali campus, offers an important educational and research hub for the region and for Africa. Research is carried out in high energy physics, condensed matter physics and, in the near future, solid earth geophysics. In its first full year of operation, the Institute has made great strides in building sustainable science in Africa. Nine short courses and workshops were held, plus ten seminars. A new set of ten MSc students were admitted, making a total of 20 students altogether in the MSc programmes. ICTP-EAIFR also admitted its first set of six PhD students. Its staff scientists published six papers in international peer-

ICTP-AP

The International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific (ICTP-AP) is under the auspices of UNESCO in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the National Science Foundation China (NSFC) and ICTP, and is China’s first UNESCO category 2 centre in the area of basic science. ICTP-AP is affiliated with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). It carries out high-level scientific research, education and training in basic science such as frontiers of theoretical physics and related interdisciplinary areas. On 13 May 2019, ICTP-AP officially announced its launch by holding a Frontiers of Fundamental Physics Conference in Beijing, China. More than 130 experts and students from 9 countries participated in the two-day conference.

03ICTP-EAIFR students attending a lecture by visiting ICTP scientist Natasa Stojic

04Yue-Liang Wu, director of ICTP-AP, at the institute’s International Conference on Frontiers of Fundamental Physics

reviewed journals. The Institute hosted 12 international visiting academics and received a donation of books from ICTP Trieste. New staff members joined EAIFR in 2019, bringing the total number of resident faculty members to four.

ICTP-EAIFR

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OutreachScientists at ICTP are passionate about science, both inside and outside of the classroom and lecture hall. Throughout the year, our scientists and mathematicians can be found engaging with the public through numerous outreach activities. From science festivals to physics roadshows, ICTP spreads the joy of science to young and old.

ICTP joined in the celebration launching the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The Year was officially inaugurated at UNESCO headquar-ters in Paris on 29 January with a programme of conferences and debates highlighting the relevance of the Periodic Table in addressing relevant challenges for sustaina-ble societies, in fields as diverse as health, food security and energy. The celebration included a lec-ture by Ben Feringa, 2016 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, as well as a presentation of the latest synthe-sized elements by Yuri Oganessian, who played an important role in the synthesis and study of the heavi-est – and newest – elements from 104 to 118. Other topics included applications for sustainable de-velopment, educational outreach, and the origins of elements.

Every year on 16 May, the Interna-tional Day of Light (IDL) illuminates the role that light plays throughout our lives. From medicine to com-munications and energy, light’s diverse uses touch on science, art, education and sustainable develop-ment. ICTP, which together with its UN Partner UNESCO organized the International Year of Light in 2015, hosted this year’s flagship IDL cele-bration in Trieste. Titled “Illuminating Education”, the event featured a range of activities that reflect how light is used in science and technol-ogy, sustainable development, and education and culture. The keynote speaker was Sir Michael Berry from the University of Bristol, who talked on Optica Fantastica: Images to Illuminate the Physics of Light.

A session during ICTP's International Day of Light flagship event

ICTP researcher Sandro Scandolo introducing two imaginary elements to the Periodic Table at the launch of the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements

A team of young climatologists and earth scientists with connec-tions to ICTP visited universities around Zimbabwe, bringing one-day Physics Without Frontiers (PWF) masterclasses in Earth system physics to students at four universities, encouraging students to be curious about the planet and possibly become researchers themselves. The PWF science road-show featured five Earth system physics scientists, including two postdoctoral fellows from ICTP. In morning and afternoon sessions, the team walked students through the fundamentals and open ques-tions of weather forecasting, aer-osols and the atmosphere, climate modeling, and seismology. Stu-dents then engaged in a climate modeling activity, exploring sce-narios with different levels of car-bon dioxide in the atmosphere. The day wrapped with presentations about career opportunities in Earth system physics, and each student received a certificate of comple-tion after this intense training. Science, technology, innovation

and ... lots of fun! That was the aim of two exciting science outreach events organized by ICTP in May. On Friday 24 May, the Centre hosted a Science Picnic entitled “A Day with Leonardo”, featuring scientists, experiments, and educational workshops for schools. On Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 May, the annual Mini Maker Faire arrived, showcasing technological creativity with hundreds of inventors from different European countries.

Participants of the ICTP Physics Without Frontiers science roadshow in Zimbabwe

The 2019 edition of Trieste's MiniMaker Faire, held at ICTP in May

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Why are there still fewer women than men in science? In a world where just 30% of researchers are women, the reasons are many, ranging from the challenge of balancing family life and career to a lack of childcare support and role models. ICTP hopes to address some of these challenges through a number of initiatives aimed at increas-ing the participation and representation of women in physics at the Centre.

Since 2002, when ICTP first started keep-ing track of gender statsitics at the insti-tute, women scientists from developing countries have visited ICTP more than

18,000 times for its research and educa-tional opportunities. ICTP supports initia-tives to increase that number. One of its most successful efforts has been its Ca-reer Development Workshop for Women in Physics, held every other year since 2013. Details about the edition held in 2019 are on the facing page.

ICTP helps to raise awareness of the im-portance of gender parity in science through public events and social media campaigns. In 2019, the Centre organ-ized and co-hosted outreach activities in Trieste to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Supporting GenderParity in Science

2019 International Day of Women and Girls in Science

ICTP celebrated the UN’s 2019 International Day of Women and Girls in Science with events at ICTP and in downtown Trieste. The International Day, which is officially celebrated on 11 February, puts a spotlight on the challenges that women scientists face and the benefits that equality can bring to everyone. Science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of the internationally agreed sustainable development goals, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

ICTP, together with the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), hosted an event to celebrate the work of female scientists in Trieste, as well as the many inspirations that gal-vanized their careers in science. Following a brief introduction by OWSD Programme Coordinator Tonya Blowers, representatives of Trieste’s science institutions showcased their research to the general public in a science fair format. There were also activities for children, as well as a par-ticipatory art exhibit through which attendees showed their support for gender equality in science. The event was free and open to the public, and attracted more than 100 people.

In addition, ICTP hosted the visit of secondary-school students from Trieste to meet with ICTP scientists and post-docs for an interactive dis-cussion and game related to science career challenges and opportunities.

Conference on Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?

In November, ICTP hosted the Conference on Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It? The conference marked the end of a three-year collaborative pro-ject called “Gender Gap in Science”, whose goals were to study the barri-ers that prevent women from achiev-ing success in science research and to produce data to eliminate these barriers and promote equity in sci-ence. “At the moment, the main message that we can draw from the survey is that the gender gap is very real,” said Marie-Françoise Roy, a di-rector of the conference. The organ-izers chose ICTP as the ideal environ-ment for hosting such a conference. “We wanted to do something at an international level, and ICTP has been crucial in helping us support people coming from developing countries,” said Roy.

Career Development Workshop for Women in Physics

One of the most successful ac-tions ICTP has taken to improve gender parity in science is the Career Development Workshop for Women in Physics. The fifth such workshop, which takes place every other year, happened in October 2019 and attracted more than 50 participants from 42 countries. The workshop was co-directed by Elizabeth H. Simmons, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of California-San Diego, Shobhana Narasimhan, Professor of Theoretical Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Nicola Spaldin, Professor of Materials Theory at ETH Zurich, and Erika Coppola, a scientist with ICTP’s Earth System Physics section.

ICTP is proud to have supported these activities, as it is very much in line with the institution’s mission of removing barriers for those in-terested in contributing to science. Gender equity is one of the main issues facing communities that wish to build scientific capacity locally. Past iterations of the workshop have welcomed talks from many distin-guished scientists, and participants are in all stages of their careers, with many early career scientists.

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GovernanceICTP is a Category 1 Institute of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and operates under a tripartite agreement between the Italian Government, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and UNESCO. Each party has a representative on the Centre’s Steering Committee, which sets general guidelines for the Centre’s activities, determines budgeting levels, and considers proposals from the Director for the programme, work plans, financial plans, and budget.

ICTP Steering Committee

UNESCO:Shamila Nair-Bedouelle

Assistant Director-General

Natural Sciences Sector, UNESCO

ICTP Scientific Council

Carlos Alberto Aragão de CarvalhoInstitute of Physics, The Federal

University of Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

William BialekDepartment of Physics

Princeton University

Princeton, NJ, USA

Edouard BrézinLaboratoire de Physique Théorique de l’ENS

Paris, France

Ingrid DaubechiesDepartment of Mathematics

Duke University

Durham, NC, USA

Elfatih A.B. EltahirDepartment of Civil and

Environmental Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, MA, USA

Renata KalloshDepartment of Physics

Stanford University

Stanford, CA, USA

ICTP also has a Scientific Council that comprises distinguished specialists in disciplines relevant to the Centre’s activities who represent a broad geographical range. The Council advises ICTP on its programmes of activities, taking into consideration major academic, scientific, educational and cultural trends relevant to the Centre’s objectives.

Luciano Maiani (Chairman)Dipartimento di Fisica

Università di Roma La Sapienza

Rome, Italy

Juan M. MaldacenaInstitute for Advanced Study

Princeton, NJ, USA

M.S. NarasimhanCentre for Applicable Mathematics

Bangalore, India

Michele ParrinelloDepartment of Chemistry and

Applied Biosciences

ETH Zurich

Lugano, Switzerland

Martin ReesInstitute of Astronomy

Cambridge, UK

Valery A. RubakovRussian Academy of Sciences

Institute For Nuclear Research

Moscow, Russian Federation

Subir SachdevDepartment of Physics

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA, USA

Ashoke SenHarish-Chandra Research Institute

Allahabad, India

Winston Wole SoboyejoMechanical Engineering Department

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Worcester, MA, USA

Gang TianDepartment of Mathematics

Princeton University

Princeton, NJ, USA

Cumrun VafaDepartment of Physics

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA, USA

IAEA:Najat Mokhtar

Deputy Director General, Department of

Nuclear Sciences and Applications, IAEA

Italian Government:Fabio Zwirner

Department of Physics and

Astronomy, University of Padua

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Donors

+ African Palliative Care Association, Uganda

+ Asian Pacific Centre for Theoretical Physics, South Korea

+ Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Italy + Association for Computing

Machinery, USA

+ Boston College, USA + Bruker AXS GmbH, Germany + Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique

et Moléculaire, Switzerland

+ Comune di Trieste, Italy + Consiglio Nazionale delle

Ricerche Istituto di Fotonica

e Nanotecnologie, Italy

+ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Italy

+ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto Officina dei Materiali, Italy

+ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto per lo Studio dei

Materiali Nanostrutturati, Italy

+ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto per la Microelettronica

e Microsistemi, Italy

+ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto SPIN, Italy

+ Dept. of Science & Technology, India + Douglas Instruments, UK + ENEL Italia S.r.l., Italy + Ente per le Nuove Tecnologie,

l’Energia e lo Sviluppo Economico

Sostenibile (ENEA), Italy

+ European Commission + European Mathematical Society + European Photonic Industry + Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy + Foundation Compositio

Mathematica, The Netherlands

+ Gambetti Kenologia S.r.L., Italy + Google Ireland Limited + Indian Institute of Science, India + Institute for Antrophological

Research, Croatia

+ Institute of International Education, USA + International Atomic Energy Agency

+ International Commission of Optics, USA

+ International Commission on Illumination, Austria

+ International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, USA

+ International Mathematical Union, Germany

+ International Telecommunication Union, Switzerland

+ International Union of Crystallography, UK

+ International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, Germany

+ International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, UK

+ Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica, Italy

+ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy

+ Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale, Italy

+ Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Italy

+ King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia + Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan

(KTH), Sweden

+ Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS)

+ Lancaster University, UK + Lighting Europe AISBL, Belgium + Lupieri Fabrizio, Italy + Middle East Federation of

Organizations of Medical

Physics, Qatar

+ Ministry of Science and Technology, Pakistan

+ MiTeGen, USA + Molecular Dimensions, UK + Monash University, Australia + Monton MMS, Croatia + NCCR Marvel, Switzerland + Optical Society of America (OSA), USA + Park Systems Europe GmbH, Germany + Politecnico di Torino, Italy + Prof. A. R. Binesh, Iran

+ Psi-k - Daresbury Laboratory, UK + PTW Freiburg, Germany + Regione Autonoma Friuli

Venezia Giulia, Italy

+ Rotary Trieste, Italy + Scientific Committee on Solar

Terrestrial Physics, Canada

+ Shenzhen UBM Herong Exhibition Co., Ltd, China

+ Simons Foundation, USA + Sincrotrone Trieste Società

Consortile per Azioni, Italy

+ SISSA, Italy + Societa ltaliana di Ottica

e Fotonica, Italy

+ Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, Sweden

+ The Changchun Inst. of Optics, Fine Mechanics & Physics, China

+ The French Alt. Energies & Atomic Energy Commission, France

+ The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), USA

+ The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), USA

+ The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Italy

+ The World Bank, USA + Transitions Optical, Ireland + U.S. Civilian Research

Development Foundation, USA

+ UNESCO (Statutory contribution) + Università di Bologna,

Dipartimento di Chimica, Italy

+ Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy + Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy + Università la Sapienza, Italy + Université de Bordeaux, France + Université Paris Diderot, France + Université Paris Saclay, France + University of California, San Diego, USA + University of Cologne, Germany + Victoria University of

Wellington, New Zealand

+ World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Switzerland

Scientific and Administrative Staff 2019

Fernando Quevedo until 31 October 2019

Atish Dabholkar from 1 November 2019

Scientific Consultants:Tony Apollaro

Francesco Benini

Luciano Bertocchi

Pierluigi Cascioli

Laure Gouba

Marta Losada

Marcello Musso

Joe Niemela

Renato Padovani

Nico Pitrelli

Verónica Riquer

Director’s Office

Administrative Staff

Tahir Shah

Lina Sitz

Daniele Treleani

Claudio Tuniz

Long-term Visiting Scientist:Mohamed Al-Hada

Michele Cicoli

Asma Farooq

Pramod Kumar Shukla

Roberto Valandro

SDU CoordinatorEnrique Canessa

Technician, SDUCarlo Fonda

Sci. Prog. Expert and Sys. AdminIvan Girotto

Human Resources Officer Svetlana Gorodetskaya

Associate Procurement OfficerSilvana Medica

System and Network AnalystClement Onime

Head, ICTS Ulrich Singe

IT Engineer, ICTSSnezana Stantic

Public Information OfficerMary Ann Williams

In addition, ICTP employed 113

General Service staff in 2019

Director

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Scientific and Administrative Staff 2019

Section Head: Atish Dabholkar

—until the end of 2019

Bobby Acharya

Paolo Creminelli

Mehrdad Mirbabayi

Joan Elias Miro

Kyriakos Papadodimas

Pavel Putrov

George Thompson

Giovanni Villadoro

Emeritus Scientists:Kumar S. Narain

Seifallah Randjbar-Daemi

Goran Senjanovic

Alexei Smirnov

Post-doctoral Fellows:Jian Peng Ang

Marco Celoria

Nayara Fonseca

James Ingoldby

Jin U Kang

Takeshi Kobayashi

Giancarlo Panizzo

Olga Papadoulaki

Arnab Rudra

Arturo R. Sanchez Pineda

Leonid Serkin

Eirik Eik Svanes

Ida Zadeh

Long-term Visiting Scientists:Aleksandr Azatov

Ghasem Exirifard

Yasaman Farzan

Diptimoy Ghosh

Hilal Hamdellou

Tony Kakona

Kaniba Mady Keita

Michele Pinamonti

Shehryar Sikhander

Kate Shaw

Mohammad Sheikh-Jabbari

Victor Tapia

Vladimir Tello

Orlenys Troconis

Research Staff Associates: Shiraz Minwalla

Leopoldo Pando Zayas

Ravi Sheth

Scientific Consultants:Francesco Benini

Edi Gava

Andrea Romanino

Visiting Professor:Marina Cobal

High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

Section Head: Rosario Fazio

Nadia Binggeli

Marcello Dalmonte

Ralph Gebauer

Ali Hassanali

Mikhail Kiselev

Sandro Scandolo

Antonello Scardicchio

Nicola Seriani

Emeritus Scientist:Vladimir E. Kravtsov

Distinguished Staff Associate:Boris Altshuler

Research Staff Associate:Alexander Nersesyan

Long-term Visiting Scientists/ Boltzman Senior Fellows:Alejandro Rodriguez Garcia

Natasa Stojic

Post-doctoral Fellows: Adriano Angelone

Narjes Ansari

Khatereh Azizi

Jean Paul Faye

Ricardo Franklin Mergarejo

Pierre Martin Fromholz

Sukanya Ghosh

Karen Hovhannisyan

Paule Gonzalo Manzano

Tiago Mendes Santos

Elham Moharramzadeh Goliaei

Uriel Nicolas Morzan

Victor Naden Robinson

Andrei Pavlov

Emiliano Poli

Samare Rostami

Angelo Russomanno

Scott Richard Taylor

Nandhakumar Velankanni

Long-term Visiting Scientists:Najmeh Eshaqi Sani

Alejandra Foggia

Wenbin He

Chuang Li

Pengfei Liang

Rajat Panda

Sayed Reza Safdari

Daniel Shadrack

Scientific Consultants:Pasquale Calabrese

Asja Jelic

Alessandro Laio

Giuseppe Santoro

Erio Tosatti

Scientific Collaborators:Giuseppe Mussardo

Mauro Sellitto

Alessandro Silva

Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics

Mathematics

Section Head:Claudio Arezzo

Emanuel Carneiro

Lothar Göttsche

Stefano Luzzatto

Pavel Putrov

Fernando Rodriguez Villegas

Distinguished Staff Associate:Don B. Zagier

Post-doctoral Fellows:Tarig Abdelgadir

Victoria Cantoral-Farfan

Karen Corrales Escalona

Alejandra Rincón Hidalgo

Lucia Dora Simonelli

Zakarias Jon Sjöström Dyrefelt

Long-term Visiting Scientists:Anh Hung Nguyen

Cristian Andres

Gonzalez Riquelme

Oscar Emilio Quesada Herrera

Research Fellows:Esen Aksoy Yazici

Ali Golmakani

Jesus Rojas Juyumaya

Comlan Edmond Koudjinan

Celestin Kurujyibwami

Zeinab Sayed Ibrahim Mansour

Lucas da Silva Oliveira

Tiago Henrique Picon

Azizeh Nozad

Scientific Consultants:Carolina Araujo

Giovanni Bellettini

Francesco Pappalardi

Adriana Sofer

Earth System Physics

Section Head: Filippo Giorgi

Abdelkrim Aoudia

Erika Coppola

Riccardo Farneti

Graziano Giuliani

Fred Kucharski

Andrea Pozzer

Adrian Tompkins

Staff Associates:In Sik Kang

F. Molteni

J. Shukla

Post-doctoral Fellows: S. Abba Omar

J. Ciarlo

Sushant Das

Laetitia Foundotos

Russell Glazer

S. K. Mueller

Rita Nogherotto

Emanuela Pichelli

Francesca Raffaele

Marco Reale

Taleena Sines

Susanna Strada

Jose Abraham Torres Alavez

Blaž Vicic

Scientific Consultants:Anna Pirani

C. Solidoro

A. Vuan

Applied Physics

Maria Liz Crespo

Yenca Olivia Migoya Orué

Bruno Nava

Marco Zennaro

Long-term Visiting Scientists:Katy Alazo Cuartas

Federico Bernardini

Werner Florian Samayoa

Yang Liu

Moez Altayeb Alhag

Seid Salahadin

Kasun Sameera Mannatunga

Giacomo Vinci

Scientific Consultants: Christine Amory Mazaudier

Luigi Ciraolo

Ermanno Pietrosemoli

Sandro Radicella

Marco Rainone

Claudio Tuniz

Technical Assistant:Andres Cicuttin

Quantitative Life Sciences

Section Head:Matteo Marsili

Jean Barbier

Antonio Celani

Jacopo Grilli

Édgar Roldán Estebanez

Research Staff Associates:Mahesh Bandi

Fakteh Ghanbarnejad

Rami Pugatch

Massimo Vergassola

Yasser Roudi Rashtabadi

Consultant:Chris Mathys

Post-doctoral Fellows:Roman Belousov

Andrea Mazzolini

Anjan Roy

Section Head: Fernando Quevedo

Post-doctoral Fellows: Sebastian Cespedes Castillo

Francesco Muia

Long-Term Visiting Scientists:Ozgur Akarsu

Senarath de Alwis

Ayman Ali

Alexander Belavin

Leopoldo Pando Zayas

Pramod Kumar Shukla

Scientific Consultants:Matteo Bertolini

Marco Serone

String Pheno-monology and Cosmology

3534

ICTP Publication Highlights, 2019

B. S. Acharya, M. Dhuria, D. Ghosh, A. Maharana

and F. Muia, “Cosmology in the presence of

multiple light moduli”, Journal of Cosmology

and Astroparticle Physics, 1911, 035 (2019),

DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/035.

P. Creminelli, G. Tambalo, F. Vernizzi and

V. Yingcharoenrat, “Resonant Decay of

Gravitational Waves into Dark Energy”, Journal

of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 1910,

10 (2019), DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2019/10/072.

J. De Boer, R. Van Breukelen, S. F. Lokhande,

K. Papadodimas and E. Verlinde, “Probing

typical black hole microstates”, J. High

Energ. Phys. 2020, 62 (2020). https://

doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2020)062.

M. Serone, G. Spada and G. Villadoro, “𝜆𝜆4

theory — Part II. the broken phase beyond

NNNN(NNNN)LO”, J. High Energ. Phys. 2019,

4 7 (2019), DOI: 10.1007/JHEP05(2019)04 7.

High Energy, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

M. Angeli, E. Tosatti and M. Fabrizio,

“Valley Jahn-Teller Effect in Twisted Bilayer

Graphene”, Phys. Rev. X, 9 (2019), 041010.

M. Corva, F. Mohamed, E. Tomsic, M. Rinaldi,

C. Cepek, N. Seriani, M. Peressi and E. Vesselli,

“Learning from Nature: Charge Transfer and

Carbon Dioxide Activation at Single, Biomimetic

Fe Sites in Tetrapyrroles on Graphene”, The

Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 123 (2019), 3916.

E. Poli, K.H. Jong and A. Hassanali, “Charge

transfer as ubiquitous mechanism in determining

the negative charge at hydrophobic

interfaces”, Nature communication,

arXiv: 1904.05766 (2019). In press.

X. Turkeshi, T. Mendes-Santos, G. Giudici

and M. Dalmonte, “Entanglement-

Guided Search for Parent Hamiltonians”,

Phys. Rev. Lett., 122 (2019), 150606.

Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics Mathematics

E. Carneiro, D. Oliveira e Silva and M. Sousa,

“Sharp mixed norm spherical restriction”,

Advances in Mathematics, 34 1 (2019), 583𝜆 608.

L. Goettsche and Y. Yao, “Generating functions

for K-theoretic Donaldson invariants and

Le Potier’s strange duality”, Journal of

Algebraic Geometry, 28 (2019), 43-98.

S. Luzzatto, S. Tureli and K. War, “Integrability

of continuous bundles”, Journal für die

reine und angewandte Mathematik

(Crelles Journal), 752 (2019), 229-264.

F. Rodriguez Villegas and D. Radchenko,

“Independence polynomials and

hypergeometric series”, eprint

arXiv: 1908.11231 (2019).

E. Coppola, ..., F. Giorgi, et al., “A first-of-its-kind

multi-model convection permitting ensemble

for investigating convective phenomena over

Europe and the Mediterranean”, Climate

Dynamics (2019), doi:10.1007/s00382-018-4521-8.

F. Giorgi, F. Raffaele and E. Coppola, “The

response of precipitation characteristics to

global warming from climate projections”,

Earth System Dynamics, 10 (2019), 73-89.

F. Jia, W. J. Cai, L. X. Wu, B. L. Gan, G. J. Wang,

F. Kucharski, P. Chang and N. Keenlyside,

“Weakening Atlantic Niño-Pacific connection

under greenhouse warming”, Science Advances,

5 (2019), eaax4111, DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aax4111.

D. Manu-Marfo D, A. Aoudia, S. Pachhai

and R. Kherchouche, “3-D shear-wave

velocity model of the crust and upper

mantle beneath the Tyrrhenian basin and

margins”. Scientific Reports, 9 (2019), 1-10.

Earth System Physics

J. Barbier, F. Krzakala, N. Macris, L. Miolane

and L. Zdeborová, “Optimal errors and phase

transitions in high-dimensional generalized

linear models”, PNAS, 12, 116 (2019), 5451-5460,

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1802705116.

A. Celani, A. Mazzolini, “Generosity, selfishness

and exploitation as optimal greedy

strategies for resource sharing”, Journal of

Theoretical Biology, 485 (2019), 110041.

R. Chétrite, S. Gupta, I. Neri and É. Roldán,

“Martingale theory for housekeeping heat”,

EPL (Europhysics Letters), 6, 124 (2018), 60006.

K. Jovic, J. Grilli, M. G. Sterken, J. A. G. Riksen,

B. L. Snoek, S. Allesina, J. E. Kammenga,

“Transcriptome dynamics predict

thermotolerance in Caenorhabditis

elegans”, BMC Biology, 17 (2019), 102.

Applied Physics Quantitative Life Sciences

J. Agarwala, M. Bari, F. Bradamante, A. Bressan,

C. Chatterjee, A. Cicuttin, P. Ciliberti, M. L. Crespo,

S. Dalla Torre, S. Dasgupta, B. Gobbo, M. Gregori,

G. Hamar, S. Levorato, A. Martin, G. Menon, L. B.

Rizzuto, Triloki, F. Tessarotto and Y. X. Zhao, “The high

voltage system with pressure and temperature

corrections for the novel MPGD-based photon

detectors of COMPASS RICH-1”, Nuclear

Instruments and Methods in Physics

Research A (NIM-A), 942 (2019), DOI:

10.1016/j.nima.2019.162378.

P. A. Barro, M. Zennaro, J. Degila and E.

Pietrosemoli, "A Smart Cities LoRaWAN Network

Based on Autonomous Base Stations (BS)

for Some Countries with Limited Internet

Access", Future Internet, 11(4), 93 (2019),

https://doi.org/10.3390/fi1104 0093.

A. Baucon, M. Bednarz, S. Dufour, F. Felletti, G.

Malgesini, C. Neto de Carvalho, K. J. Niklas,

A. Wehrmann, R. Batstone, F. Bernardini,

A. Briguglio, R. Cabella, B. Cavalazzi, A.

Ferretti, H. Zanzerl and D. Mcllroy, “Ethology

of the trace fossil Chondrites: Form,

function and environment”, Earth-

Science Reviews, 202 (2019), DOI:

10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.102989.

A. Kashcheyev and B. Nava, "Validation

of NeQuick 2 model topside ionosphere

and plasmasphere electron content using

COSMIC POD TEC", Journal of Geophysical

Research: Space Physics, 124 (2019),

https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA026971.

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