New Research Areas

In its new strategic plan, ICTP announced new research areas it will pursue in fields related to existing ones which could have significant interdisciplinary research potential, especially in their possible impact on developing countries. Those fields are:

Energy and Sustainability

Energy is a topic of key importance for developing countries, which have special needs for energy use and production. This new ICTP research area will concentrate on different sources of energy (with a focus on renewable energy) and their impact in the developing world. The area complements current activities of the Earth System Physics and Condensed Matter Physics sections, in particular the latter section's computational modelling of different materials relevant for energy conversion and storage. The hope is that such research could be implemented in collaboration with other local and national institutions.

Computing Sciences

The systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe, and transform information and its applications in computing systems is an ever-growing field that somehow now mirrors the role that theoretical physics used to play years ago when ICTP was founded. It has direct impact on society as a whole, and can be implemented in developing countries through improved access to computers via the internet. It is directly related to development and has important financial implications. This activity could be considered as a natural extension of the mathematics group to more applied areas. Expanding the scope of this new group to include quantum computing could also link with current research interests at ICTP and the University of Trieste.

A local cluster of computers would provide a world-class facility for the Centre's scientists and visitors. This will be needed for independent computational resources at ICTP for the existing groups (mostly Condensed Matter and Earth System Physics) and for the proposed new sections mentioned above.

Seminars

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Activities view all

Europe/Rome 2019-05-30 08:00:00 2019-06-05 22:00:00 ICTP Caribbean School on Materials for Clean Energy | (smr 3297) * * * Online application is open until 3 February 2019 for candidates requesting financial support, otherwise until 15 March 2019 * * * Energy and environmental issues are particularly challenging for the developing countries in general, both politically and economically. This may be due to the technological, cultural, and awareness gaps that exist in the general public in those countries with respect to the most developed countries. The impact of these gaps is mainly seen in the policies regarding global warming, the use of solar, wind, and hydrogen sources of energy, as well as the development of efficient energy storage technologies and capabilities. In 2012, the UN's SE4ALL issued a report which argues that no sustainable development can occur without sustainable energy. The Global Action Agenda defined by SE4ALL will require a critical mass of highly trained individuals within developing nations. Currently, the three major areas of energy-related research are energy conversion, energy saving (including efficiency) and energy storage, all of which will require significant capacity building within developing countries. Strengthening the scientific and technological knowledge base in these areas represents a realistic approach to reduce the dependence on foreign imported skills and resources. We believe that the understanding of the fundamental processes that are experimentally observed within materials at different scales can guide a very much needed approach of materials-by-design to improve efficiency and costs in several environment-friendly technologies. The School in Cartagena (Colombia) will provide an initial overview of recent experimental and theoretical developments and an in-depth treatment of some advanced computational methodologies that are used to address the problem of materials for energy and environmental applications. A multiscale view of the materials modeling, with electronic structure methods at its base, is of paramount importance to guide and understand experimental results. Such a view is becoming the dominant framework of investigation in condensed matter physics, materials science, biology, and nanoscience. In particular, methods such as Density Functional Theory are based on the almost exact solution of the Schrödinger equation for the electrons and allow for the description of the mechanical, vibrational, electrical, magnetic, and several other properties of solids with "chemical accuracy," without any empirical input. This is a rapidly evolving field, which also offers people in developing countries the opportunity to carry out cutting-edge theoretical research with relatively low financial investments in equipment. Our ultimate goal is to bring young scientists from those countries up to speed by providing them with the most recent knowledge about experimental developments as well as fundamental concepts coming from electronic structure research. This activity offers also networking opportunities for participants to facilitate carrying out state of the art theoretical research on clean-energy materials, back in their home institutions. Among the topics covered, we find: - Computational multiscale techniques for the study of new materials - Latest experimental developments in clean energy - Structural, mechanical, optical, and transport properties of Surfaces and Interfaces - Energy generation and storage materials design - Catalysts and energy-saving materials Lecturers: P. Balbuena (TAMU) F. Giustino (Oxford) N. Marzari (EPFL) E. Menendez (U. Chile) C. R. Miranda (USP) A. Oganov (Skoltech) S. Scandolo (ICTP) - - - Deadine for application: 3 February 2019 if requesting financial support, otherwise: 15 March 2019. ICTP Secretariat: smr3297@ictp.it Cartagena - Colombia ICTP pio@ictp.it 30 May 2019 - 5 Jun 2019

» ICTP Caribbean School on Materials for Clean Energy | (smr 3297)

Europe/Rome 2019-06-24 08:00:00 2019-06-28 22:00:00 2nd East-African Workshop on the Internet of Things | (smr 3279) For more information, please visit the following website: https://eaifr.ictp.it/events/2019-04-08-2nd-east-african-workshop-on-the-internet-of-things/ Kigali - Rwanda ICTP pio@ictp.it 24 Jun 2019 - 28 Jun 2019