updated on 20 August, 2026

Plan 15 September



updated on 13 September 2026


ROOM 1
OPENING SESSION Welcome and Greetings OS.I
09:00 09:45	Chair: Carlo Massimo CASCIOLA, Sapienza University of Rome, Dean of the Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering
	OS.I.1	Antonella POLIMENI Sapienza University of Rome, Rector Welcome address
	OS.I.2	Andrea LENZI CNR, President
	OS.I.4	Rocco BELLANTONE ISS, President
	OS.I.5	David CALONICO INRIM, Scientific Director, on behalf of the President, Prof. Pietro ASINARI
	OS.I.6	Massimo BERSANI FBK - Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Head of the Materials and Topologies for Sensors and Devices Research Unit, on behalf of the President, Prof. Ferruccio RESTA
	OS.I.7	Candido Fabrizio PIRRI Politecnico di Torino, Vice Rector for Research Model and Infrastructure Development, on behalf of the Rector, Prof. Stefano CORGNATI
	OS.I.8	Giovanni TOSI University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, on behalf of the Rector, Prof. Rita CUCCHIARA
PLENARY SESSION PS.I Turning Transition Goals into Technology: Energy, Materials and Advanced Electronics
09:45 11:15	Energy transition is often framed in terms of targets and timelines. Delivering it, however, depends on a less visible chain of choices: innovation strategies, research priorities, materials, processes and electronic technologies that must perform reliably and at scale. This session moves from the system-level challenge to the enabling technological layer beneath it, bringing strategic direction into dialogue with industrial implementation. On the table — the strategies and actions required to advance the energy transition, the contribution of research and technological development to its implementation, and the materials and processes enabling advanced semiconductor interconnects and packaging. Together, the contributions ask what technological and industrial capabilities are needed to turn transition goals into deployable solutions — a question taken forward by the following round table on research infrastructures.
	Chair: Candido Fabrizio PIRRI, Politecnico di Torino, Vice Rector for Research Model and Infrastructure Development
	PS.I.1	Antonio RINALDI - CV ENEA, Representative of the TERIN Department The role of research, materials, and manufacturing in EU competitiveness, with a focus on electrochemical storage
	PS.I.2	Luigi Marco CALLIGARICH IMAPS Italy, CEO Materials and processes for advanced semiconductor interconnects and packaging
	PS.I.3	Ennio CAPRIA ESRF, Deputy Head of Business Development & Director of the Platform for Advanced Characterisation, Grenoble, France Accelerating Advanced Materials Discovery for the Energy Transition with Synchrotron X-rays
*11:15 - 11:30 break*
ROOM 1
ROUND TABLE RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES AT WORK Driving Innovation across Advanced Technologies, Industry and Life Sciences
11:30 13:00	Coordinators: Vittorio MORANDI, CNR-ISMN & Marco ROSSI, Sapienza University of Rome
	Moderator: Maurizio MELIS, Scientific Journalist
	The round table is now a fixture of NanoInnovation, and its recent editions have traced a deliberate arc. Together, they have explored the evolving role of Research Infrastructures within the European research and innovation ecosystem: in 2024, as open-access platforms and shared facilities supporting technology transfer; in 2025, as strategic enablers of innovation pathways in the age of artificial intelligence. In both cases, the focus was on the technologies, expertise and open-access services that infrastructures offer to research and industry. The 2026 edition takes the third step and is guided by one overarching question: what do Research Infrastructures deliver when they are fully operational? The two previous editions examined what exists and why it matters. This edition turns to evidence of impact: what changes, measurably, in a laboratory, on a production line or along a clinical pathway as a result of access to an infrastructure. The timing is deliberate. Exceptional European and national public investment has equipped Italy and the wider European research system with a new generation of research and technology infrastructures. The question is no longer how to build them, but how to convert this investment into lasting capability: scientific excellence, industrial competitiveness, advanced skills and societal benefit. That conversion depends on sound governance, sustainable operating models and credible evidence of results; investment momentum alone is not enough. This edition also widens the frame to the life sciences, where these issues are especially acute. In this domain, a result generated through an infrastructure is not merely a measurement: it must be traceable, reproducible and robust enough to withstand regulatory scrutiny and support clinical validation. This applies across nanomedicine, biotechnology, medical devices and precision healthcare. An access and quality-assurance model that meets these requirements sets a demanding benchmark for every other sector. Bringing together infrastructure managers, public institutions, large companies and SMEs, and the life sciences and healthcare communities, the discussion will address this overarching question through four connected dimensions of delivery. These are: governance and financial sustainability beyond the investment cycle; industrial uptake of open-access services, with particular attention to the barriers facing SMEs and the intermediation and support needed to overcome them; quality assurance, traceability and interoperability of research data as foundations of trust between laboratory, factory and clinic; and the contribution of infrastructure capabilities, together with the skills needed to operate them, to European technological sovereignty across critical technologies — advanced materials, micro- and nanoelectronics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and health technologies. The aim is not to survey facilities, but to define a shared, evidence-based agenda: what Research Infrastructures have delivered, where their limits remain, and what is needed for them to serve as a lasting bridge between science, technology, industry and healthcare. Four supporting questions at a glance Governance and sustainability. Which governance and funding models can sustain infrastructure capabilities beyond the current investment cycle, and how should their long-term value be demonstrated? Industrial uptake. What still prevents SMEs from using open-access services, and which forms of intermediation and support would remove those barriers? Quality and data. Which shared standards and practices for quality assurance, traceability and interoperability are needed to make results trustworthy and reusable from laboratory to factory to clinic? Technological sovereignty and skills. Which infrastructure capabilities and professional profiles are essential for Europe to build and retain strategic capacity across critical technologies? Panel The panel will bring together infrastructure managers; representatives of public institutions responsible for policy and funding; large companies and SMEs; and members of the life sciences and healthcare communities.

13:00 - 14:00 light lunch
CLOISTER ROOM
PLENARY SESSION PS.II Sustainable by design: European strategy, electronics and AI in materials development
14:00 15:30	A material that works in the laboratory still has to survive three filters: a European agenda that decides what gets funded, an environmental account that no longer closes by itself, and a development cycle that AI is rewriting while it runs. The session takes them together, because they have stopped being separate problems. On the table — industrial value chains and where Europe places its bets, the real cost of the electronics we design, digital twins and simulation as everyday laboratory instruments.
	Chair: Ennio CAPRIA, ESRF, Grenoble, France
	PS.II.1	Eva-Kathrin SCHILLINGER Secretary General of IAM-I Advanced materials for Europe: from a shared agenda to industrial value chains
	PS.II.2	Jean-Pierre RASKIN - CV Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, Professor Sustainable electronics
	PS.II.3	Chiara PERNECHELE - CV Dallara, Senior Lab Researcher Advanced and sustainable composite materials in motorsport: an industrial perspective
*15:30 - 16:00 break*
PLENARY SESSION PS.III From measurement to meaning: models, infrastructures and what they make possible
16:00 17:30	Nano-scale instruments have made measurable what could not be measured before. That does not settle what a measurement means, who maintains the systems that produce it, or what it authorises anyone to decide. The session follows the question into the places where it is not academic: a clinical pathway, a food chain, a model someone acts on. On the table — how measurement becomes meaning, the infrastructures that keep evidence shareable and comparable, and what our models quietly rule out.
	Chair: in definition
	PS.III.1	Manuel DELAFLOR Epistemologist, Philosopher of Science Dimensional Collapse: Nano-sensing, Models, and the Human Question - How measurement becomes meaning, and how models shape what becomes possible
	PS.III.2	Maurizio SCARPA University of Padua & European Reference Network For Rare Hereditary Metabolic Diseases (Metab-ERN), Coordinator Crossing the barrier: Nanomedicine and advanced therapies for rare metabolic diseases (in definition)
	PS.III.3	Claudia ZOANI ENEA, Researcher METROFOOD-RI - the European infrastructure for metrology in the food sector (in definition)

STAGE
18:00 - 19:00 LCA Aperitif You will survive the talks, but now you deserve a drink
Organised by Claudia BIANCHI

But before you raise that glass, a question: do you actually know where your Spritz has been? The prosecco grapes sweating under the Veneto sun, the Aperol traveling halfway across Italy, the ice cubes silently guzzling electricity, the plastic straw you grabbed without thinking — every sip has a story, and not all of it is pretty. Welcome to the most delicious LCA case study ever attempted. Life Cycle Assessment (ISO 14040/44) is the tool engineers and scientists use to measure the true environmental cost of a product — from cradle to grave, or in this case, from vineyard to recycling bin. It is rigorous, it is quantitative, and — we promise — it can be genuinely fun when the functional unit is something you can drink. In this informal evening session, we will walk you through the core concepts of LCA using a Spritz as our guinea pig: system boundaries, impact categories, carbon footprint, data gaps, and the uncomfortable truth that ""natural"" does not always mean ""sustainable."" No slides you won't understand. No equations you didn't ask for. Just good science, honest numbers, and an aperitivo well deserved. Bring curiosity. We'll bring the Spritz.

WELCOME COCKTAIL in THE CLOISTER

19:15 - 20:15 Theatre Performance TROPPO BELLA PER ESSERE VERA di Massimiano Bucchi · con Maria Vittoria Barrella · regia di Maura Pettorruso Produzione Pequod Compagnia