ICTP Celebrations

On Thursday 27 August 2020, ICTP celebrated two achievements: the graduation of this year's Postgraduate Diploma students as well as the recognition of the two scientists who have been awarded the 2020 Spirit of Salam Award.

Both ceremonies were held virtually and were recorded.

This year's Diploma graduates faced challenges above and beyond the standard rigor of completing ICTP's year-long intense educational programme: in March, the Centre was forced to close its premises due to the COVID crisis, and all classes were moved online. The transition went smoothly, however, as ICTP is well equipped for delivering online content.

The family of ICTP founder and Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam established the Spirit of Salam Award in 2014 to honour those within the extended ICTP family of scientists and non-scientists who show that they have worked tirelessly to further Abdus Salam's humanitarian  passion  and vision for the cooperation,  promotion and development of science and technology in the developing  world. The 2020 Award honours M.S. Narasimhan, an eminent mathematician who was the head of ICTP's mathematics section from 1993 to 1999, and Erio Tosatti, a co-founder and senior member of ICTP's Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics section who served as ICTP Director ad interim from 2002 to 2003.

On the occasion of the Spirit of Salam Award, two side events were organized as follows:

• Thursday 27 August at 12:00: Special talks and reminiscences by Professors Yu Lu and Ramakrishnan in honour of  Erio Tosatti
• Friday 28 August at 10:00: Reminiscences by colleagues, students and friends in honour of M.S. Narasimhan followed by a Maths Colloquium by Nigel Hitchin on "Generalizations of Teichmüller space".

The ceremonies and talks were livestreamed on ICTP's YouTube channel.