M.S. Narasimhan, long-time head of ICTP’s mathematics group who retired in January 1999, was recently named the co-winner of the ‘King Faisal International Prize for 2006′. The award was given in recognition of his path-breaking research in strengthening the links between mathematics and physics.
Narasimhan will share the prize with Britain’s Simon Kirwan Donaldson, president of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and professor of mathematics at Imperial College, London. Donaldson is being honoured for his seminal contributions to mathematics in helping to provide a foundation for physical theories.
The prize, named after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (1906-1975), carries a US$200,000 cash award. The awards ceremony will take place in February in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

On this date, 10 years ago, IAEA Director General Hans Blix and UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor-Zaragoza presided at a meeting in ICTP’s Main Lecture Hall marking the official transfer of administrative responsibility from IAEA to UNESCO. IAEA has remained active in ICTP activities—indeed in 2006, it will cosponsor 10 workshops with the Centre in Trieste. UNESCO, however, has become the lead administrative agency under a tripartite agreement between ICTP, UNESCO and the Italian Government.

Hans Blix, Miguel Virasoro and Federico Mayor-Zaragoza cutting the cake at the party following the official transfer ceremony

The first ICTP-CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) joint meeting School-Workshop on Dynamical Systems will take place at IMPA (Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pure e Aplicada), in Rio de Janeiro, on 16-27 January. Jacob Palis, chairperson of the ICTP Scientific Council, and Marcelo Viana, winner of the Ramanujan Prize, are co-organizing the event. Under a joint agreement, subsequent ICTP-CNPq cosponsored research and training activities wiil also take place within the region.

29 January would have marked the 80th birthday of Abdus Salam, the founder of ICTP. For more information about his life and career, click here.

Hector Manuel Moya-Cessa, a professor at Instituto Nacional de Astroíisica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), Puebla, Mexico, has won the 2006 ICO/ICTP Award. The cermony took place in the ICTP Main Lecture Hall during the Winter College on Quantum and Classical Aspects of Information Optics, 30 January - 10 February. Ari Friberg, president of ICO, presided. Moya-Cessa is being honoured for the high level quality of his research activities on the foundation of quantum optics and for his active involvement in organizing research and training activities in this field throughout Latin America.

ICTP is among the organizers of the workshop, “Grid in Finance in 2006″, that is taking place in Palermo, Italy, on 3-4 February. Grid is an emerging computing model that provides the ability to perform higher throughput computing by taking advantage of many networked computers. It could provide wide-ranging applications in many fields, including finance. The meeting in Palermo is the first world forum for ‘grid’ researchers and practitioners, both in academia and industry. Institutions from Australia, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States will also be in attendance. Alvise Nobile, past ICTP Scientific Computer Section head and a member of the workshop’s organizing committee, will represent the Centre.

Adama Dieng, UN Under-Secretary General, visited ICTP on 2 February to meet with the ICTP Director, K.R. Sreenivasan. Following the meeting, Dieng and and Sreenivasan participated in a conference on human rights organized by the University of Trieste.

K.R. Sreenivasan and Adama Dieng at ICTP

Co-written by ICTP’s Carlo Fonda and Marco Zennaro, (ARPL and SDU), Wireless Networking in the Developing World is a how-to guide for building, deploying and maintaining wireless information networks in rural parts of the developing world. The book is now available as a download under a Creative Commons “share alike” license. It is also be available in a print-on-demand format.

Raphael Mukaro, ICTP Junior Associate 2002-2007 and head of the Physics Department at Bindura University of Science in Bindura, Zimbabwe, has been awarded the 2005 TWAS (The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World) Young Scientist of the Year Award. The award was given to Mukaro by the Research Council of Zimbabwe. He is being honoured for the development of powerful but inexpensive electronic equipment such as sensors, data acquisition and control systems, and computer software, used for research and teaching.

Alexis De Greiff, vice-rector of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and a science historian who received his doctorate degree from London University, has published a brief account of the ideas that led Abdus Salam to lead the effort for the creation of ICTP. Titled “Abdus Salam: A Migrant Scientist in Post-Imperial Times,” the article was published in the 21 January 2006 edition of Economic and Political Weekly.

The International Herald Tribune has published an article (Tuesday, 28 February) describing the efforts of ICTP’s Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory (ARPL) to provide developing countries with low-cost, effective electronic communications through the use of tin can antennas. For the full text, click here.