Inside Matter’s Secrets

ICTP's Associates Programme supports regular visits to ICTP, allowing researchers from the Global South to stay in touch with ICTP's active and stimulating scientific environment. Since 2024, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development has been supporting the Associates Programme, giving scientists from the Middle East and North Africa the opportunity to bring one of their students with them.

The protagonists of this month’s video in the series ‘Science is our Common Language’ are ICTP-Arab Fund Associate Hand Zenia and his student Sarah Louifi from Algeria.

Hand Zenia is an associate professor at the University Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria and he has been an ICTP-Arab Fund Associate since 2024. Zenia is a condensed matter physicist working on theoretical modelling and first-principles simulations of nano- and mesoscopic systems.

In 2025 he visited ICTP with Sarah Louifi, a PhD student at the University of Mouloud Mammeri Tizi-Ouzou, whom he supervises on a project that investigates heat and charge transport in mesoscopic systems.

You can learn more about them, their research and their experience at ICTP in this video: