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.

Activities view all

Europe/Rome 2022-11-28 07:00:00 2022-12-09 21:00:00 9th Workshop on Collaborative Scientific Software Development and Management of Open Source Scientific Packages | (smr 3696) An ICTP Meeting in presence Writing software has become central to research in many fields of science. This school aims to give early-career scientists an introduction to a variety of topics that help them to write efficient, clean, maintainable and long-lived code that is useful beyond solving an immediate problem. In a mixture of talks and many hands-on sessions, the focus lies on showing best practices and building fundamental skills in creating, extending and collaborating on modular and reusable software. Topics: Python / shell scripts as glue code Introduction to computer architectures and software optimization Modular, reusable software design Effective collaborative development with multiple co-authors Version control and release cycles Automated testing frameworks Structured documentation Management of open source scientific packages Continuous integration & deployment Visualisation as a development tool Conversational development Lecturers: A. CORBETTA, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands A. FARNUDI, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France L. GARRISON, University of Bergen, Norway I. GIROTTO, ICTP, Trieste, Italy D. GRELLSCHEID, University of Bergen, Norway Prerequisites: Participants are expected to have some experience in a programming language, this course is not suitable for beginners in programming. Grants: A limited number of grants are available to support the attendance of selected participants, with priority given to participants from developing countries. There is no registration fee. In person participation: As regards the COVID-19 policy, we advise to follow the updated rules available on the ICTP page Access Guidelines for Visitors. ICTP ICTP pio@ictp.it 28 Nov 2022 - 9 Dec 2022