ICTP's 60th Anniversary

Thank you to the whole ICTP community for celebrating our 60th anniversary with us! The 15 November event provided a vision for the future of the institute and lively discussions about the frontiers of science. All sessions from that day are now available on ICTP's YouTube channel.

On Friday 15 November, ICTP will host scientists and dignitaries from around the globe to celebrate its 60th anniversary.  

The pivotal event, in a year punctuated by celebrations organized on four different continents, will involve Nobel laureates, eminent scientists, representatives of governments and international organizations who will discuss the most pressing global challenges and the relevance of ICTP's mission in a fragmented and rapidly evolving world.

Speakers include:

• David J. Gross, professor of theoretical physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004.
• Marc Mézard, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Bocconi University and former director of the École normale supérieure in Paris. He is also Chair of the ICTP Scientific Council.
• Lidia Arthur Brito, Assistant Director General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO.
• Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of the United Nations University and member of the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board.
• Nana Ama Browne Klutse, Professor of Physics at the University of Ghana and Vice-Chair of IPCC Working Group I for the Seventh Round of Assessment.

The participants expected at the event will come from 38 different countries: 12 African countries, 6 South American countries, 8 Asian countries, 11 Europeans, and the United States.

"Science – and more generally a critical spirit and a culture of fact-based inquiry – are essential to creating the informed policies and international cooperation needed to address global challenges. Fundamental science and an interdisciplinary approach are essential prerequisites for social and economic development. ICTP's mission therefore remains as relevant today as it was in the time of Abdus Salam: to advance the frontiers of knowledge to understand the inner workings of nature and advance science globally, thus helping to build a more equitable and inclusive world," said ICTP Director Atish Dabholkar.

The celebratory event on 15 November revolves around three round tables that will highlight the importance of ICTP's mission in addressing some of the most important challenges of the present, but will also look to the future and the paths forward for the Centre.

Nobel laureate David Gross will participate in the panel entitled ICTP at the frontiers of science, which will address the crucial importance of basic research globally and the relevance of an international, inclusive and interdisciplinary approach.

Two topics in particular will be at the center of the event, scientific computing and climate science, which ICTP has chosen as strategic research directions for the coming years. As a UNESCO Category 1 Institute, ICTP has the role of contributing to expanding the scientific ecosystem in developing countries and can therefore play a key role at the global level, addressing major global challenges while ensuring open access to computational resources and a participation of the Global South in any meaningful action against climate change.

The panel discussion entitled The Future of Scientific Computing and Quantum Science will address the fundamental challenge of ensuring equal access to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and recent advances in quantum computing. These new technologies are influencing the scientific process in several fields. The uniqueness of ICTP's mission to promote scientific excellence and collaboration between scientists from around the world gives it a key role in ensuring that the needs of scientific communities in less developed regions of the world are taken into account and addressed.

The panel entitled Global Science for Climate and Energy will address the contradictions between the actions needed to reduce the carbon footprint and the current increase in energy consumption. Reducing fossil fuel consumption is increasingly urgent, but any realistic attempt to mitigate the impact of climate change must take into account our growing energy needs, especially in the Global South, where a large part of the population still lacks access to electricity. In line with its mission to promote scientific cooperation globally, ICTP intends to facilitate an international dialogue that considers the two critical issues of climate and energy together and not in isolation.

ICTP, an example of science diplomacy for 60 years

Founded during the Cold War, for many years the ICTP was one of the few places in the world where scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain could meet. Thanks to the collaboration with the IAEA and the aegis of the United Nations, the very first scientific event organized by ICTP, right in correspondence with the ceremony for its foundation, was attended by Soviet, American and European physicists. It was a conference on plasma physics that would kick off studies on applications of nuclear fusion. The images of the first Chinese delegation that visited the ICTP in 1979 after the years of closure by Mao also made history.

Although the geopolitical context has changed, ICTP remains an example of how international research institutions can play an important role in bridging policy and development gaps by focusing on large-scale scientific challenges that transcend borders between countries.

For example, the Centre played a key role in the SESAME (Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) project in Jordan, a synchrotron built also thanks to the support of Israel, Iran, Turkey and Palestine. It was Abdus Salam himself who launched the idea of an international scientific centre in the Middle East in 1983, with the hope that scientific collaboration could pave the way for broader cooperation between the countries of the region. ICTP contributes to the project both strategically and by organizing training courses for the scientists working on it.

Overcoming geopolitical boundaries and being a safe haven for scientists at risk are key commitments for ICTP. Each year, the Centre hosts an average of 6000 researchers from over 150 different countries, some of which are experiencing conflicts.

At ICTP, scientifically necessary conversations can take place that elsewhere seem unthinkable: for example, the international workshops that ICTP organizes on monsoons, in which Indian and Pakistani scientists participate, to try to better understand a phenomenon that increasingly afflicts the territories between the two states.

From Abdus Salam onwards, the destination of 108 Nobel Prize winners: scientific excellence at ICTP

Initially, it was above all the personality of Abdus Salam, who in 1979 was awarded the Nobel Prize for the theory of electroweak unification, that attracted such high-level scientists, but the ability to attract scientists of the highest value has continued also thanks to the excellence of the Centre's research. Over the years, the work of ICTP researchers has contributed, directly or indirectly, to important scientific discoveries. An example of this is the work of Alexei Smirnov, now a researcher emeritus at ICTP, who contributed to the theoretical prediction of neutrino oscillation, whose experimental discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2015.

Over the years, some of the most important scientists from all over the world have come to ICTP to interact with the Centre's researchers: 19 Fields Medallists, the most important international award in mathematics, and 108 Nobel laureates, including the very recent John Hopfield and James Robinson, respectively Nobel Prize in Physics and Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024, have visited the Centre on various occasions.

ICTP has established itself above all as a hub of a network of international collaborations, particularly between the North and the South of the world. Last spring, the Centre launched the International Consortium for Quantum Computing (ICOMP), an ambitious project that aims to create a global synergy for the development of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and high-performance computing, to ensure equitable access to resources and participation in the construction of new knowledge related to these technologies, also in collaboration with scientists in developing countries.

Success stories from Africa and Palestine: ICTP alongside researchers in developing countries

At the heart of ICTP's mission is a commitment to ensuring that science develops as a truly global effort, involving researchers from around the world, regardless of the geopolitical barriers that separate them.

In its 60-year history, ICTP has helped train more than 4500 students and researchers from 108 developing countries through the various training programs and scholarships it makes available to researchers to participate in programs such as the Postgraduate Diploma Program. For more than 30 years, this flagship of the centre's educational offer has allowed students from developing countries to receive the advanced training necessary to access some of the most competitive master's and doctoral programs in the world.

The story of Estelle Inack, a Ghanaian researcher and young entrepreneur, testifies to the success of the program. After successfully graduating and receiving a scholarship to ICTP, Inack completed a PhD in collaboration with SISSA, and then left for Canada. Today she is a researcher at the Perimeter Institute and co-founder of the company yiyaniQ, which deals with quantum technology. On November 15 at ICTP she will participate in the panel on the future of scientific computing.

Climatologist Nana Ama Browne Klutse, who will speak on the panel on climate and energy, also benefited from an advanced training program for doctoral students organized by ICTP in collaboration with the IAEA. Later in her career she also visited the Centre several times thanks to the Associates' programme, which allows researchers to spend longer periods at ICTP. Klutse is now Vice-Chair of IPCC Working Group I for the Seventh Round of Assessment, as well as heading the physics department at the University of Ghana.

In addition to welcoming scientists from all over the world to its headquarters in Trieste, ICTP continuously organizes numerous conferences and workshops in developing countries and actively collaborates with four partner institutes located in Rwanda, Mexico, Brazil and China. Just over ten years ago, two ICTP researchers also launched the Physics Without Frontiers (PWF) programme, which organises training events aimed mainly at young university students in physics, directly in developing countries. PWF has reached, among others, young scientists from Afghanistan, Nepal and Palestine, where the program has organized many events over the years.

It is thanks to ICTP and PWF that Mohammed Faraj, a Palestinian theoretical particle physicist, has managed to find his way in this field of research. In 2012, when he participated in the very first event organized by the program, he was an aspiring biophysicist, but he was so fascinated by the theoretical physics presented at the PWF event that he decided to change fields and embrace high energy physics. Thanks to ICTP, he received a scholarship that allowed him to enroll in a joint doctoral program with the University of Udine and, after a postdoc at Shanghai University, he is now a postdoctoral researcher at ICTP and a member of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN since 2022.

History of ICTP

In 1964, Nobel laureate Abdus Salam founded the ICTP in Trieste, Italy, in collaboration with Italian physicist Paolo Budinich. Inspired by the belief that science is the common heritage of humanity, Salam secured the support of the Italian government, the United Nations and the IAEA as founding sponsors.

From the initial focus on theoretical high-energy physics, during its 60-year history at the forefront of science, ICTP's research interests have evolved into a range of fundamental and applied research topics, in response to the needs of physicists and mathematicians from disadvantaged countries, identifying emerging directions ahead of their time.

The choice of Trieste, a strategically located Italian city whose history has been defined by changing political boundaries, symbolizes ICTP's commitment to international cooperation through science. This commitment was strengthened when UNESCO designated ICTP as a Category 1 institute for building scientific capacity in developing countries.