The meetings and site visits of the Working Group in Advanced Materials, Nanomaterials and Biophysics chaired by Dr. Luigi Ambrosio (CNR) and Dr. Sofi Bin-Salamon (AFOSR) were organized with the aim to strengthen/increase the mutual collaboration between Italy and USA to build and foster ground-breaking science through fundamental discovery in advanced materials and biophysics.
The Italian delegation was composed by Luigi Ambrosio (CNR-coChair), Valentina Benfenati (CNR-ISOF), Thomas Brown (UniTorVergata), Annalisa Convertino (CNR-IMM), Diletta Sciti (CNR-ISSMC), Mario De Stefano Fumo (CIRA), Luca Zoli (CNR-ISSMC), Giulio Busulini (IIT).
The meeting at the Italian Embassy in Washington was held, on the 23rd of July, to discuss the output of the working group in the last few years and on Exploratory Concepts in Biophysics, Quantum Sensing, Advanced Manufacturing, and Computing. The meeting was hosted by Prof. Gilli, Science Counselor Embassy of Italy, in addition to delegation members, the meeting participants included: Sofi Bin-Salamon (Air Force Office of Scientific Research), Dr. Sirin Tekinay (National Science Foundation) Dr. Kate O’Neil (University of Maryland) Dr. Antonio Cibelli (University of Bari) Dr. Barbara Barile (University of Bari) Dr. Ishan Barman (Johns Hopkins University), Dr. Zhijian Pei (Texas A&M University) Dr. Jian-Ping Wang (University of Minnesota), Dr. Tinen Iles (University of Minnesota), Dr. Wolfgang Losert (University of Maryland), and Dr. Larry Nagahara (Johns Hopkins University).
The events enabled the participants to share their scientific expertise and explore collaborations that are likely to inspire concrete outcomes. The meeting was closed by Prof. Gilli by highlighting that this WG is one of the most successful within the US-Italy JC in Science and Technology. Recognition to V. Benfenati and to the WG was made for the last publication in Nature-Nano.
The visits at Texas A&M University on 19/20 July, at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Whiting School of Engineering on 22 July and at University of Maryland on 24 July, was really insightful either for materials under extreme environment and glial engineering, aerospace and AI.
The working group thanks: (i) Prof. Marco Gilli and Dr. Maurizio Biasini for the event at the Embassy of Italy, (ii) Dr. ZJ Pei, Dr. Vlad Yakovlev, Dr. Hongmin Qin and collaborators of the Texas A&M University, (ii) Dr. Larry Nagahara and collaborators of Johns Hopkins; (iii) Prof. Wolfgang Losert, Dr. Kate O’Neil and collaborators of the University of Maryland, for organizing the excellent meetings and site visits.
