ICTP is hosting a three-day Advanced Research Workshop entitled Sharing Knowledge Across the Mediterranean. The workshop, which will begin on Monday 6 November at 9.00 in the Main Lecture Hall, is the third in a series organized by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Previously events were held in Geneva (2004) and Casablanca (2005). This year’s workshop, which is dedicated to the memory of ICTP’s founding director Abdus Salam on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death, will feature an opening talk by Carlo Rubbia (Nobel Laureate in Physics 1984). Abdulsalam El-Qallali, the Libyan Ambassador to the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a former ICTP Associate, will also speak at the opening session. Other presenters include Adnan Shihab El-Din, former secretary general of OPEC, who will examine the prospects for fossil fuel supplies, and Herwig Schopper, former director of CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, who will describe the current state of SESAME project, which has brought the first-ever synchrotron light facility to the Middle East. For additional information, see http://events.ictp.it/nov.html

Nature Materials (November 2006) has published an article, “Nurturing Science in Developing Countries,” that examines the state of research and training in physics in Trieste. The article is based on interviews with ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan, former ICTP acting director Erio Tosatti, and Mohamed H.A. Hassan, executive director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).

The Science Academy of Turin, Italy, is awarding Giuseppe Furlan, head of ICTP’s Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL), the Ravani-Pellati Prize for his outstanding contributions to scientific research and international cooperation. On the same occasion, ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan will receive the Panetti-Ferrari Prize for Applied Mechanics for his important contributions to both experimental and theoretical studies of turbulence. The awards ceremony will take place on on 20 November. For further information, see the page of cultural institutions of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

An article co-authored by Mori Fellow Ali Bashir and ICTP staff scientist Charles Chidume is one of the 25 top articles in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications for April-June. The announcement was made by Science Direct, which provides lists of the most popular science articles based on downloads on the internet. “Approximation of common fixed points for finite families on nonself asymptotically nonexpansive mappings in Banach spaces", which has been published online, will appear in print in the February 2007 edition of the journal. Mori Fellowships—a programme sponsored by the Japanese government and administered by ICTP—are granted to doctoral and post-doctoral students from sub-Saharan Africa.

The Fourteenth Elettra Users’ Convention is taking place at the ICTP Main Lecture Hall from 20-22 November. The meeting will be accompanied by two Satellite Workshops on “New Frontiers in Insertion Devices” and “Science at High Pressures” and the announcement of a prize in memory of Luciano Fonda and Paolo Maria Fasella to be awarded to a young researcher.

Abdus Salam, founding director of ICTP and Nobel Laureate for Physics 1979, died 10 years ago today. Salam led the Centre from its inception in 1964 until 1994. An article recalling the illustrious life of Abdus Salam and featuring reminiscences from his student and long-time collaborator, Seifallah Randjbar-Daemi, currently ICTP Assistant Director, was published today in Il Piccolo.

On 22 November, the Cuban Ambassador to Italy, Rodney Lopez Clemente, and Lourdes Alicia Diaz, Science and Technology Counsellor, visited ICTP Director, K.R. Sreenivasan, to discuss areas of potential cooperation between Cuba’s scientific community and the ICTP.

Counsellor Lourdes Alicia Diaz, Ambassador Rodney Lopez Clemente, and ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan.

Padma Kant Shukla, professor of physics at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, and a frequent visitor to ICTP, has been appointed a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the field of physics. He is being recognized for his world-class research in the areas of collective interactions in complex plasmas and fluids as well as in neutrino plasmas and quantum systems.
As a member of the Swedish Academy, he will be among 18 eminent scientists advising the Nobel Committee on potential Nobel Prize candidates in physics. Shukla, who is native of India, is the first German physicist to be elected a foreign member of the Swedish Academy in physics. He has participated in ICTP training activities in plasma physics for more than two decades, serving as a course director for workshops and colleges on plasma physics since 1995.

ICTP has announced a new one-year ICTP Diploma Programme in Basic Physics (DBP). The programme is designed to assist young physicists and mathematicians from sub-Saharan Africa who have recently received undergraduate degrees and are interested in pursuing their studies at the graduate level. Applications are now being accepted. The programme will be launched in September 2007.

“The arithmetic of the electoral reforms” served as the subject of the third public lecture in the series Frontiere jointly organized this year by ICTP, Immaginario Scientifico and the Department of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Trieste. Marco Li Calzi, professor of mathematics at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, spoke on the crucial role played by mathematics in determining the number of seats that would likely be available for representatives of congress and parliament based on a nation’s population and the way in which a government chooses to divide its political districts. He focused on the situation in both the United States and in Italy. The lecture took place at the University of Trieste.

On 11 December, Senator Milos Budin, Undersecretary, Italian Ministry of International Commerce, visited ICTP. He spoke with ICTP Director, K.R. Sreenivasan, and several other Centre scientists and staff, about potential avenues of cooperation.

Meeting with Senator Milos Budin

In collaboration with ICTP’s Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory (ARPL), the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Malawi Polytechnic is developing a pilot project to establish a wireless network for telemedicine. The project will involve four institutions in Malawi: the Malawi Polytechnic, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, and the Ndirande and Limbe health dispensaries. Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia has donated the equipment. Technical experts from Malawi were trained at ICTP’s Project-oriented Advanced Training on Wireless Networking in June 2006.

The awards ceremony for the Ramanujan Prize will take place on Monday, 18 December, in ICTP’s Main Lecture Hall. The ceremony will begin at 11.00 a.m. with welcoming remarks by ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan. Ragnar Winther, Chairman of the Abel Board, will speak at 11.10. Ramdorai Sujatha, professor of mathematics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, and winner of the 2006 Ramanujan Prize, will receive the prize at 11:20 and giver her acceptance speech at 11:25. The ceremony will conclude with a talk by Lennart Carleson, 2006 Abel Laureate. Sujatha is being honoured for her work on arithmetic of algebraic varieties and her contributions to non-commutative Iwasawa theory.
The Ramanujan Prize, funded by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters through the Abel Fund, in cooperation with the International Mathematical Union (IMU), is given annually to a mathematician under 45 from a developing country. It is named after the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

ICTP will be closed for winter break from Saturday, 23 December until Sunday 7 January. The Centre’s first activity in 2007 will be the 13th International Workshop on Computational Physics and Materials Science: Total Energy and Force Methods, which will be held from 11 to 13 January. On behalf of the Centre’s staff and scientists, we wish all of our colleagues and friends a happy and healthy holiday season.