Research Areas

This research topic includes the following two areas: photothermal spectroscopy and quantum cascade laser coupled to cavity ring down spectroscopy for trace gas detection. Research is carried out in a number of fields, including material characterization, environmental and analytical chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, and ecology. We maintain strong working collaborations with Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, INFN Trieste, INFN Frascati, the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia, and the National Institute for Research and Development of Isotopic and Molecular Technologies, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The research activities receive substantial operating funds through contributions from SPIE, the International Society of Optics and Photonics, through its Anchor Research Program with ICTP.
Currently, the activities are directed to:

• the development of laser-based methods, bioanalytical methods, for the identification and determination of toxic compounds in the environment,
• the investigation of photocatalytic degradation of pollutants in the environment,
• implementation of on-line thermal lens detection for electrophoresis techniques,
• separation and detection of biomolecules using electrophoresis coupled with thermal lens spectrometry,
• determination of thermo-optical properties of materials by thermal lens spectrometry and beam deflection spectroscopy.
   

We are currently participating in upgrading the data acquisition and processing system of the COMPASS spectrometer at CERN. Working with INFN Trieste and the Technical University of Munich, we are  developing systems to support COMPASS's experimental results on hadronic structure. In particular, the current collaboration focuses on the development of a new generation of multichannel trigger-less data acquisition and real-time feature extraction architecture based on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Systems-on-Chip (SoC) for the particle detectors of AMBER that is the next-generation successor of the COMPASS experiment starting its data-taking in 2023.
 

One of the aim of the collaborative projects with IAEA NSIL [link] is to develop a compact radiation monitor, spectrometer and multi-channel analyser based on novel detectors and modern FPGA technology. The system is meant to be integrated on board of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The use of artificial neural networks in nuclear instrumentation such as the classification of the signal pulse shape for real-time identification of ionizing particles will be explored. The project foresees the development of an experimental  high-performance  hardware platform based on FPGA-Multiprocessor devices for training and optimization of machine learning methods for nuclear applications. The collaboration also foresees the development of a transportable X-ray fluorescence and related techniques spectrometer and scanner for non-destructive quantitative elemental analysis, and to meet most of the spatially resolved measurements needed for the characterization of cultural heritage objects and other kinds of samples.
 

Technologies that can compute large amounts of data quickly without high power demands are in high demand, with standard computing facilities reaching their limits. Systems on Chip (SoC) technologies offer a way forward with the possibility of parallelising critical computing tasks at high processing speed, based on tightly interconnected FPGA fabrics with high-performance multi-core processors. Although systems based on this kind of complex devices can deliver a great number of computational services with low latency responses and high throughput online data processing, they are still difficult to exploit. Our research is in collaboration with the University of Trieste and focused on new methodologies and hardware/software architectures for efficient implementation of clusters of SoC-FPGA for supercomputing and scientific applications. The research plan includes hardware prototyping, FPGA design and software development. We have designed a novel hardware board, called HyperFPGA, which can be electrically interconnected according to a bidimensional mesh network to build a scalable and homogeneous SoC-FPGA cluster.
 

High-density electrophysiological instrumentation is gaining wider use in many fields, as a tool for investigating and understanding the workings of the brain. But the cost of this tool can be prohibitive for many laboratories, particularly in developing countries. HiCCE is an open-hardware and open-source project aimed at providing high-performance, low-cost research instrumentation for electrophysiology. As an Open Science project, all information and plans will be publicly available, as a resource for anyone interested in related research questions, removing cost as a barrier to research.

The main hardware components of HiCCE are a custom mezzanine data acquisition board (HiCCE-128) connected to a commercial FMC Standard Carrier based on SoC-FPGA, and a host computer for remote operation and data storage. The system comprises 128 independent channels capable of acquiring signal at 31.25 kHz, with 16 effective bits per channel with a measured noise level of about 3 μV. The reliability and feasibility of the implemented system have been confirmed through the acquisition of different electrophysiological signals such as EEG alpha waves, EoG eye blinking, ECG and EMG.

We are also collaborating with the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to develop a wireless capacitive electromyography (cEMG) measurement system with reconfigurable hardware and digital filter to monitor muscle activity. The increasing number of people with musculoskeletal diseases, such as chronic lower back pain, myopathy and fibromyalgia, requires innovative monitoring and treatment concepts. Challenges for this project include designing a compact and low power consumption wireless cEMG sensor, high sampling rate and resolution filter module, high signal-to-noise ratio performance, and dynamic filtering capability.
 

This research topic includes the application of X-ray analytical instruments and other scientific methods to Cultural Heritage. As a centre of excellence for the application of applied science in cultural heritage, we are involved in a large number of scientific collaborations to study paleontological, archaeological and paleoanthropological materials by means of X-ray computed microtomography (microCT) and complementary techniques. The research is being conducted in collaboration with Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and Centro Fermi (Rome).  We have also extensive experience in the study of ancient landscapes through archaeological surveys and excavations, geophysical and other remote sensing techniques, in collaboration with the University of Trieste, the Soprintendenza Archeologica del FVG and other Italian, Slovenian and Croatian institutions. Thanks also to the support of private funds, interdisciplinary studies about the ancient landscape of the northeastern Adriatic regions have been carried out. We have recently participated in archaeological excavations of the San Rocco Roman military camp (2nd- 1st centuries BC).