On 27 and 28 October, INAF headquarters in Rome will host the official start of the activities of Spoke 3, called Astrophysics and Cosmos Observations, of the National Centre (ICSC) approved within the framework of PNRR MUR funding. The Spoke, led by INAF and in collaboration with INFN, sees the participation of the Universities of Rome Tor Vergata, Trieste, Catania, Turin, the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and SISSA.
A number of major Italian companies that were already founding members of the ICSC National Centre, such as Banca Intesa San Paolo, UnipolSai, Sogei and IFAB, are participating in the Spoke's activities.
The Spoke involves a total of about 150 researchers from all the institutions and companies. The main research lines of the Spoke concern activities related to High Performance Computing, Machine Learning and Visualisation, Big Data processing and archiving, with the development of new algorithms capable of meeting the computational challenges of the near future using the new Exascale infrastructures.
Activities will be carried out in the context of the main research lines of Astrophysics such as Radio Astronomy, including the SKA project, space missions such as Euclid and Gaia, large-scale simulations, high energy physics and fundamental physics.
Matteo Viel will be the coordinator of the SISSA node. The Astroparticle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology and Theoretical and Scientific Data Science groups will be involved in the exploitation of high performance computing to galaxy formation, dark matter searches, theories of gravitation, gravitational waves, stellar evolution and machine learning applications to astrophysical data sets.
The enterprises, with the support of researchers from the spoke-affiliated institutions and universities, will have specific activities that are linked to the tools that will be developed in the research areas and that will find practical applications in the immediate future, thus contributing to the actions of the PNRR MUR plan that provides support for the entire initiative: 'From Research to Enterprise'.
More info on the Kick-off meeting