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Good morning, welcome everyone to this morning
dedicated to ENI Awards 2011.
Welcome also to our prestigious guests to this morning event.
On my way here I remembered a phrase a Nobel Prize winner said
about the work of scientists: "Give them some money and let them play".
I think that this morning is a demonstration
of how when scientists "play", in the true sense of the word,
with their intelligence and ability, the results are obvious,
they are very important and have almost
immediate effects on all of our lives.
It is significant that scientists have increasingly greater need
for funding and resources for their their increasingly sophisticated research.
The ENI Awards, with what is now a long history behind them,
are I believe an extraordinary example
of how research resources can be used to their best advantage,
for energy, for the environment and for all our lives.
So to introduce this morning and and greet him, at this point
I'll leave you with Salvatore Meli,
the Executive Vice President of ENI's Research
and Technological Innovation.
Thank you, and good morning ladies and gentlemen,
first and foremost on behalf of ENI a warm welcome to this event
which is an integral part of the ENI Awards 2011 event.
I would especially like to thank
the Chancellors Ezio Pelizzetti and Francesco Profumo for their collaboration with ENI
in making this morning's event possible
by hosting it in such a magnificent and prestigious venue
as the Castle del Valentino.
Today, all our award winners are present
at the same time in this venue and will shortly participate
in a round table which I am sure will be
especially interesting and stimulating both for the variety of themes under debate
as well as for the scientific worth of all the participants.
A few words about the ENI Awards: above all ENI Award represents
the evolution of the historic "Premio Italgas" award which initiated this path in 1987
and continued for 20 years. It's roots were right here in Turin,
so this morning's event is a bit of a return to our roots.
ENI Award, which is its evolution,
is now in its 4th edition with this 2011 edition,
and with it ENI intends to display its attention
regarding research and technological innovation
which ENI considers to be key elements in competing on the energy market
like that confronted daily by
a grand oil and gas company generally involved with energy.
Energy and environment represent inextricably linked concepts,
in many ways they are two sides of the same problem,
sometimes in conflict one with the other,
and we believe that it is through research and technological innovation
that these two elements can find the way to be reconciled and their conflict solved,
it is around these two fundamental themes
that the various sections of the ENI Awards are centred.
The first section is entitled The New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons,
and this year has assigned awards to two prestigious scientists
Martin Landro, more or less in the centre of this round table,
and Gabor Somorjai on the left,
for their work, respectively, in the field of deposit prospecting,
in particular oil deposits,
and for prestigious research activities in the area
of nanoscale heterogeneous catalysis in the case of Prof. Somorjai.
The section: Renewable and Non- Conventional Energy
aims to represent ENI's attention to the evolution we forecast
for the future of mixed energy towards new sources
which indirectly mitigate the impact of fossil fuels from
a climatic effects perspective.
This year the award has been given to Prof. Gregory Stephanopoulos
for his research in the field of bio-fuels.
The section: Environmental Protection represents the complementary aspect,
which as we said before, is inextricably, linked with production
and use of energy, a crucial element
for guaranteeing the true sustainability of any energy model
whatever its primary source may be.
This year the award has been given to Jean-Marie Tarascon
for his innovative research in the field of lithium batteries.
The storage of energy, especially using batteries,
is in fact an element I would call qualifying both for compensating for
the intermittence of many renewable energy sources,
and for the possibility of making electrical transport practical
which is an extremely promising prospect,
extremely important, especially in densely inhabited areas,
in city areas.
Concluding this picture, is the Research Debut section.
Every year ENI presents an award to two promising young researchers
under the age of 30 who have completed
their research doctorates in an Italian university.
This year the award was given to Fabrizio Frontalini and
Simone Gamba, on your left,
who have been committed to research in the
in the fields of marine biology and hydrocarbon science, respectively,
from the perspective of the transformation of hydrocarbons into fuel.
They too will have the opportunity
to speak about their research activities shortly.
To conclude, the candidates for this year's ENI Awards were
many, I won't, bore you
with statistics, but I do want to say simply
that they grossly exceeded the fated 1,000 candidate mark.
These applications come from all over the world
a testimony to the fame and appreciation
that this Award receives from every part of the world.
The selection, by the Scientific Commission
whose members include two Nobel Prize winners,
and also includes the Chancellors present today
and who I want to thank for this,
they had a hard and demanding task,
so the winners are especially deserving of our sincere congratulations.
At this point I will leave you to continue with our Gabriele Beccaria,
thank you for your attention.
Thank you. As you have seen
the organisers' idea was to bring our guests out from
behind a desk in order to create a more informal relaxed atmosphere,
so during this morning here we want to give our winners and
protagonists the chance to speak,
for them to explain their research topics that are complicated in appearance
and therefore need to be in some way translated
in order to be more comprehensible to us all.
Well then, the idea is, if our guests agree,
to start with a first round of brief presentations of their research,
we want to challenge them in in a kind of game and say
"please each of you try in 3 minutes,
in let's say a 'twitter' style
to explain to a non-specialised public what is the core,
the heart of your research",
seeing as the research topics cover many different sectors
from energy to the environment from nanotechnology to biology.
I would like to start with Prof. Gabor Somorjai who,
as we have said was awarded the New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons Award. Thank you.
3 minutes is a long time
and so more important talk has to be condensed
just to fit the time available.
First of all I am deeply honored to be a winner of the Eni Award,
I was born in Hungary and for me this is a very special and meaningful Prize
because I´m still very much part of Europe.
my wife and I were born in Budapest during the Years of WWII
and in the Cold War, my undergraduate education was
in the Technical University in Budapest
and although I went to Graduate School and a research career in the US
we have never forgotten our roots in Europe.
Now I spent my professional life in studying surfaces
and the chemistry that occurs, the boundaries of the 3 phases,
solids, gases and liquids.
It always fascinated me that surfaces play a key role
in all aspects of our daily life, including the functioning of the human body.
Surfaces are also agents of catalysts which accelerate chemical reactions
such as those that produce fuels and chemicals.
Clean air, clean water and energy conversion by chemical reaction
are all products of catalysts.
Understanding catalysis and other chemical processes
at surfaces on the molecular level
has been the aim of physical chemistry in my laboratory for the last 40-45 years.
This work has also led to rapid evolution in surface technologies
that dramatically improved the quality of our lives
and increased our life expectancy.
Microelectronics for computers, batteries for energy storage,
new polymers bioimplants such as aort valves
and replacement of joins, hips and knees
are just some of the applications of surface technologies made possible
through molecular understanding of the structure and chemical bonding of surfaces
and the motion of molecules in the solid gas,
solid liquid and solid interfaces.
The revolution in surface science
that research in my laboratory helped to spark
was enabled by the development of instruments that provided
atomic level and molecular level examination of surfaces
and chemical reactions as they proceeded on surfaces.
Prior to the development and the use of these instruments
we could only investigate surfaces in the pre natal and post mortem states
before and after surface activity took place.
This limitation left us in a state of ignorance
as to what surface processes actually occurred during reactions.
Studies of surface processes can now be monitored on the molecular level,
revealing unexpected changes to the landscapes, as they occur before our eyes.
This knowledge has led to new science
and opened the door to new technologies.
Well, this is briefly what I would summarize my research,
of course I did not do all this research, actually none of them,
my very good students and post doctorate fellows,
some of them were from Italy,
did the lion share of research, in my laboratory in Berkley,
in the College of Chemistry and in the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory,
and if you have a chance to visit California, I´d like to invite you
to come and see us in Berkley, thank you very much.
Thank you Professor, I have forgotten to make a small service announcement,
that is, we are in live web streaming on the website www.eni.com
and on Twitter too so we almost certainly have a large audience following us.
Now I will leave you with Prof. Martin Landro,
winner of the New Frontiers of Hydrocarbons Award
a Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Thank you.
Thank you. I think the easiest way to explain my research
is to use an example from medicine.
If I get problems with my lungs, I go to the doctor,
and he, or she, takes a picture of my lungs, an X-ray image,
and then he gives me some medication.
After I have taken that medication for some time,
I go back to the same doctor, he repeats his experiment,
he takes a new X-ray image of my lungs,
and then he sees how my disease is developing, hopefully to the better.
In seismic 4D or seismic repeated seismic we use exactly the same technique,
but now the body is not the human body but it's a geological body
situated 2 to 3 km below the surface,
and that's a huge challenge, to make an image at 3 km below surface.
4D seismic means to repeat that seismic image over time,
maybe 1 year, 2 years after we have started theproduction in the reservoir.
So that is my research.
This technique can also be used to monitor or to check
when we are storing CO2 in subsurface layers.
Today there are 6 to 10 experiments worldwide
where we are storing CO2 for sequestration
and those experiments are monitored by seismic repeated seismic also,
so that's another application that I think is very important
and might be more important in the future.
And then finally I would like to add that
my research has been on the incremental nature
it has not been, like, I have invented 4D, cause that's not true,
so I have made incremental, or improved the accuracy of this method,
to repeat this experiment is difficult,
and also to make improvement in the way we interpret these data.
And finally I would like to add the same as Gabor
that research of course is not been done in one head,
it's a collaborative effort in a university environment.
Thank you, now it is the turn of Prof. Gregory Stephanopoulos
the winner of the Renewable and Non-Conventional Energy Award,
Professor at the MIT in Boston. Thank you.
Thank you. It is fortunate that I'm sitting next to Prof. Somorjai
because you will see many parallels about what I am going to say
in his remarks as well.
First of all I'd like to express my deep gratitude
for the honor of being selected for the Eni Award this year
on Renewable and Non-Conventional Energy.
I was also educated in Europe, in the Technical University of Athens,
in the US you call it Technical University
but in Greece as well as in Italy you are proud
to be coming from the Polytechnic University,
so that's also called Polytechnic of Athens.
I was educated as a chemical engineer
and I hardly knew any biology when I went to the US to do my graduate studies.
Those were the years of the recombinant revolution
and it became immediately apparent that
by genetically improving micro organisms using that tremendous technology
it was possible to utilize the incredible resources of a living organism
in order to direct the functions of the organism
towards the production of useful products.
Catalysis is an enabling science.
Catalysis is responsible for trillions of dollars
of National Product produced all over the world today.
Until that time catalysis was primarily mediated
by organic and inorganic catalysts.
The advent of recombinant DNA allowed us to enter the microbe
and alter the microbe in a very direct way and create new biocatalysts.
So what is the research that we did in my lab
with the help of numerous students and post-docs
which was recognized by the Eni Award?
It is the following: if you take glucose,
you can convert that glucose into ethanol very easily,
because simply we have a yeast,
that you can find in supermarkets or you can even find in the environment,
and that yeast has the extreme capacity to convert glucose into ethanol
in as many as 10 individual reaction steps.
So the yeast will carry out those 10 steps
without knowing about that and we make ethanol,
and this is the basis of ethanol industry all over the world today.
Now another very desirable reaction we would like to do
is to take sugars or carbohydrates or cellulosic material
and convert them into a different type of fuel which is oil.
The conversion of sugars into oil is not something that micro organisms do naturally,
but if you engineer these micro organisms
you can make them capable of converting sugars into oils at very high yields,
as high as 95% of the maximum theoretical.
This is what we did in my lab.
we engineered yeasts that can accomplish hat conversion at very high yields
and now you have the capability to produce oil from carbohydrates,
which can be sugars or it can be also non-food type of feed stocks
such as cellulosic material.
The oil that you produce with these micro organisms
can be reformed into different kind of fuels
and if the yield is high enough, as we have accomplished,
then that gives the basis for a commercially feasible process.
This is the essence of what we have done.
Recombinant technology, which now is viewed as metabolic engineering,
I think is going to be at the heart of an emerging industry.
It is going to be the enabling technology for the 21st century
and it's going to find many outlets, not only in the production of fuels,
but also in the production of many chemicals, green chemicals,
chemicals of the chemical processing industry
as well as specialty chemicals and many pharmaceuticals.
So I am very optimistic about the way that this technology is going
and again I would like to express my appreciation to Eni and the committees
for the Award as well as the wonderful two-day hospitality
we had here in Italy, thank you.
Thank you, and now Prof. Jean-Marie Tarascon
from the University of Picardie in Amiens,
the winner of the Environmental Protection Award. Thank you.
Good morning, like my other colleagues I am truly honored
to be the recipient of this prize
and also I have been travelling with my education,
since I graduated from France, moved to the States for 15 years
and then came back to Europe to work in France
at the University of Jule Verne,
which by the name is a kind of dream for the future.
So, what I am doing is relatively simple;
I am working on these small gadgets that you call batteries,
that you all have in your laptops and that you hate,
because you don't have enough speaking time.
So my objective is relatively simple on paper
it's trying to improve the safety, the cost,
density and sustainability of these devices,
so that we can implement it in electric vehicles
and the next generation of electric vehicles as well as for great applications.
So the prize I received - or my team -
is more or less dealing with sustainability.
And in this case, we try to design electro materials with low CO2 consumption,
because you need to realize that nowadays
every time you use one kw/hr of batteries you generate 120 kg of CO2.
So my research is material science and we try to address sustainability in 2 ways:
by, number 1, trying to design new eco efficiencies
- processes of materials - and then,
trying to use organic electrode as part of our next generation of lithium ion batteries.
What we have done I think is relevant to this field,
and that has been the discovery of a new synthetic approach
based on ion thermal synthesis, which by the name means ionic liquids.
In this case we are able to prepare non-electrodes
at temperature of 200 °C, 500 °C lower than what was done previously,
and we are also able, owing to the rich chemistry,
to structure our powders, and last but not least important,
we discovered a completely new family of compounds by the name of fluorosulphate,
which will be the next generation of lithium ion batteries,
and that's better than the lithium iron phosphate nowadays.
So this was the first part of it,
and then in order to still improve the sustainability aspect of this technology,
we get inspired, to a certain extent, by life chemistry
and try to repeat what is going on in our organism in terms of energetics.
You know we, our body, we are living on reoxidation using organic molecules,
so the thought was why don't we use organic molecules
to make the batteries that will run our appliances in the next 10-50 years?
So in this case we discovered the activity of organic molecules
which can be made from biomass.
Now we are in the process of assembling batteries based on biomass electrodes,
which in this case will have a life cycle which is ideal
since no CO2 is produced during the
cycle of the battery and, more so, the recycling aspect is fast,
because we use the sunlight from an abundant and free source, that is the sun.
This more or less is the kind of true improvement
that we brought in the field of battery business
and that we hope will contribute very strongly
to the next generation of lithium ion batteries.
And of course the electric vehicle is very important.
When I came here, I was happy to know that today even in Torino
you are receiving the Electric Montecarlo Marathon, a race with lithium ion batteries.
I guess I maybe need to go there to see how they perform.
And also I would like to thank all my colleagues
who very strongly contributed to these achievements,
and of course I'd like to thank Eni for awarding me this Prize,
and of course for this wonderful stay in Roma, Catania, Milano and Torino.
And thank you for the attention.
Thank you Professor and now I am happy to
leave you to listen to the two winners of the Research Debut Award,
two very young Italians, two examples of, those brains that
Italy continues to produce and very often,
increasingly, sadly, we leave to make their way abroad.
First then let’s hear what Fabrizio Frontalini has to say,
he graduated from the University of Urbino
and from that moment
started a long adventure that he will tell us about. Thank you.
Thank you, good morning.
For some years I have been working with certain microorganisms
called foraminiferia, they are protozoa,
they are very simple organisms composed of a single cell,
and live along the water column or the interface between water and sediment,
in the sediment.
I actually work on only a part of these protozoa,
those known as benthic foraminifera, those that live in the sediment.
My interest in them is as bio-indicators of the
state of health of the marine environment or the transitional environments.
Foraminifera are widely used in many
sectors of earth science and environmental sciences,
for biostratigraphic ends, for example, for oil exploration,
for paleoecological and paleoclimatological
ends, and also for the so-called environmental monitoring.
In particular these organisms have a series of characteristics that
make it possible to consider them as true bio-indicators.
Typically they are very widespread,
so they can be found in all sorts of environments
both marine and transitional,
therefore in lagoons and coastal lakes.
They are plentiful in the sediment,
comprise a wide diversity,
and above all they have specific ecological needs,
in addition to very brief lives and reproductive cycles.
Of special interest we noticed that in the presence of stress or pollution,
these organisms react,
they react by varying the association parameters
that is, all those parameters
that make up the population of a particular location.
Varying for example the number of species,
therefore in the presence of pollution there is a lower number of species,
we see a dominance of those species
more tolerant of pollution.
and above all we see an insurgence of anomalies.
Something I forgot to mention is that these organisms 398 00:30:56,468 --> 00:30:58,441 have calcareous shells,
they have calcareous shells, therefore made of calcium carbonate,
and in the presence pollution deformities occur,
they are born morphologically abnormal.
We were able to find strong links between
the degree of pollution and the
occurrence of these morphological anomalies of the shells.
This is why we are trying to apply it,
it has been applied in various areas, above all in Italy,
particularly impacted, like the Venice Lagoon
and the Santa Gilla Lagoon, in the southern part of the Region of Sardinia
and the Adriatic.
Because of this there will be a brief meeting at the end of June
where the methods for studying these
microorganisms for environmental monitoring will be standardised,
in order to propose it to the European Union
as a method for assessing environmental impact
in a particular environment.
I would like to conclude this brief presentation by
thanking ENI for everything it has done,
the Enrico Mattei Foundation and especially the university's hospitality,
the Turin Polytechnic and all Turin. Thank you.
At the end of this first round of contributions
let's listen to the second winner of the "Research Debut" award,
Simone Gamba, graduate of the Milan Polytechnic. Please.
Good morning everyone.
The work I have been involved in
and that originated during a collaborative experience between ENI and the Polytechnic,
partially developing also at Rutgers University in New Jersey,
concerns the process of hydrocracking synthetic waxes.
In simple words, this is a process
that is part of a more complicated series
of a chemical-physical transformation chain that enables
the production of liquid combustibles, such as diesel,
gas oil and kerosene, starting from various sources of carbon
and not oil, but it enables the production of hydrocarbons
starting from, for example, natural gas and in the prospective future
also starting from bio-mass,
therefore also for the production of so-called zero impact green fuels,
especially concerning CO2 emissions.
The process I have worked on in particular starts from
synthetic waxes, therefore from hydrocarbons that in normal conditions
have the same appearance as a candle,
therefore a white solid, which it turns into diesel and kerosene,
and therefore fuels with suitable properties
for being used in normal engines,
and so on the everyday automobile market.
The fuels produced thanks to this process
have excellent environmental characteristics, in the sense that
they have a smaller impact in terms of emissions
because they do not contain atoms of sulphur and nitrogen,
so they do not emit sulphur and nitrogen oxide
which are amongst the main causes of acid rain,
they also don't contain a class of compounds, the aromatic compounds,
and in terms of particles too,
emission into the environment is extremely reduced.
In particular, what I have worked on
is the mathematical modelling of the process,
the development of a series of equations
that has made it possible to study what the effect of the main operative variables is,
so, these can be for example, temperature
or the pressure at which this process is executed,
on the quantity and quality of the fuels
produced starting from a wax of a certain composition.
This study, before reaching mathematical modelling
that is the writing of a set of equations that describe it,
obviously involved the study of the mechanisms and phenomena
at the root of this process,
especially the fact that this process,
this wax that is solid at room temperature,
to be treated and then subjected to this type of reaction
that pushes it to become a fuel,
is brought to mixed conditions of a liquid-vapour mixture.
This has a great influence on the process,,
on the quantity and quality of the hydrocarbons produced.
To summarise then, what I have been working on
is studying a process
that from synthetic wax arrives at the production
of liquid fuels with a low environmental impact.
At the end of my contribution I too want to thank ENI
and the Enrico Mattei Foundation for having followed us
up to the presentation of the application and then the publication of the results.
I want to express my satisfaction, great satisfaction
on receiving this award and I
want to thank ENI again for having given us all
the possibility to publicise our research in a simple and effective way.
Thank you everyone again.
Thank you, now I will give the two Chancellors the chance to speak,
first of all Prof. Francesco Profumo,
Chancellor of the Polytechnic of Turin. Thank you.
Thank you, thank you very much for being here today.
I think you all remember that the last edition of Premio Italgas
was concluded in this very venue.
This is an historic building built in 1641
it was donated by the royal family of the time
to the new princess who came from France.
In 1859, when this school was founded,
the building was given to the school, and for
over 150 years it has been the main seat of the Polytechnic of Turin.
Today it continues to be a school, and this process of restructuring was initiated,
you can see the beauty of these rooms,
and if you get the chance I suggest you also visit the two apartments,
the gold one on the left and the white one on the right,
it has been a very complex enterprise lasting 20 years,
and today it is a school, a school, the seat of the
Faculty of Architecture, and so some say that
this is the most beautiful Faculty of Architecture building in the world.
I am very grateful to ENI and the Mattei Foundation
for returning to Turin.
As our moderator and Prof. Mieli have already announced,
in reality the Premio ENI has this strong connection with the Premio Italgas
which was born in this city, grew in this city
and became the award that was assigned to two Professors
who were later awarded the Nobel Prize.
So I wish our young winners
similarly brilliant careers.
In these years I have been part of the selection committee
and I have seen how important this Award has become.
It has become a benchmark
for the international community in this sector
and today we receive over 1,000 applications every year.
The choice of winners
is a hard task especially within a community as wide
ranging and qualified as this.
I am very grateful that the 6 winners are here with us today
and naturally I hope they continue this visit
and this Turin experience which will surely be a little unexpected.
From a general standpoint Turin is an industrial city
or a post-industrial city, in reality it is a beautiful city,
it was Italy's first capital,
and in this year celebrating 150 years
the whole population has deep feelings of participation
in this unification process that is probably not yet finished.
Thank you everyone and welcome.
Thank you, and now Prof. Ezio Pellizzetti
the Chancellor of the University of Turin, thank you.
Good morning everyone.
It is a pleasure to welcome the winners of the ENI Awards to Turin.
It is also a pleasure to thank ENI
for this opportunity as my colleague Profumo has also mentioned,
and for the interviews in the afternoon,
which are important for our students and our researchers
and therefore a very important opportunity.
Turin's two universities, the Polytechnic and the University of Turin,
have made significant contributions to science,
technology and to the humanities sectors.
They are the universities of Erasmus Rotterdam, Amedeo Avogadro, Galileo Ferraris,
and many other scientists and humanists and therefore it is a very significant
situation, from the standpoint of the University of Turin's contribution.
Congratulations to the winners,
and to ENI Award and the Mattei Foundation welcome to Turin. Thank you.
Thank you Prof. Pellizzetti and now, as we said, we would like
to ask our guests and winners some questions
so that they can explain to us in more detail some
aspects of their research
and then they can interact with the public present here and the virtual public.
Our first idea was to ask
them all the same question
asking them once again to be very brief.
We know how great and decisive the effects of science are today on
society, on the world as a whole and on the lives of each individual.
These research topics are very interesting because as I said
they combine many disciplines and
from what has been explained in these brief presentations,
we can see how from energy, to nanotechnology,
to biology and single cell organisms,
there are many paths, many fascinating aspects
that can lead us to see a series of consequences for our everyday lives.
So I would like each of our guests to once more and in turn
tell us something about the applications that are already in place or imminent
or that they expect their studies to come to and may therefore have a vast impact.
It is for this activity and to open this second session that
I'm inviting ENI's Rosella Migliavacca
who will handle this second stage of the day.
Thank you. Goodbye.
Good, the question is bound to the structure
of this dialogue based encounter, of openness, of friendly science.
I would like to ask Prof. Somorjai to start with the first answer
regarding the applications of his research.
The applications over decades, or actually,
over a hundred years of surfaces, are formidable.
If you look at the development of ammonia synthesis,
that permitted the fertilizer industry
to increase the food supply by orders of magnitude,
it was one of the major applications
around the turn of the century, of the 20th century.
Organic chemistry benefitted from catalysis through the work of Sabatier,
who was one of the Nobel Prize winners in this field,
with a metal catalyst made possible for the pharmaceutical industry
in the timescale of the first couple of decades of the 20th century.
Now the important issue in the 21st century is green chemistry;
it's to selectively make a molecule that serves us in some capacity,
like a fuel or a chemical, and not make any by-products that are wasteful.
This is a major challenge and the focus is going to be on this
for many decades.
The energy conversion, chemical energy conversion,
is already giving us several new fuels that, as you heard,
are using catalysts that are biological and very selective.
And so I think that the energy supply, the chemical energy supply,
in terms of fuel, in terms of storage,
through batteries or other ways, in chemicals,
is going to be a major challenge for decades to come.
What we have is the instruments that allow us, at the molecular level,
to study these processes,
and whenever you have instruments with understanding on a molecular level,
you can develop new technology.
There is another aspect of work that we do;
science and politics are very much intertwined in the 21st century.
To have a literate public that can make choices
and follow and control the politicians to make the right decisions
requires scientific literacy,
and to translate the scientific achievements into decisions that affect our life.
It's obvious that not long ago
to put an implant in the human body was out of the question.
Now the implants give us an extra 20 years of life expectancy.
If you look at the microelectronic circuitry,
the rise of nanoscience, it revolutionized science and technology
and probably some of the changes in the Middle East
are derivative of these scientific discoveries
and the possibilities in communication across boundaries.
I think the future is great provided that we don't nationalize,
but we have to globalize science.
I'd like to encourage the young people and not-so-young people in Italy
to move around and learn from what's happening
in the United States, in China, and elsewhere,
to see how science has global influences on what we do. It's not just Italian.
And so this is a very major request.
I'm somewhat afraid that, as the quality of life improves,
the interest in moving to other countries,
to find out how the others live, is diminishing
and I hope it will not happen,
certainly the ENI Award has helped us so that it will not happen.
Grazie Professore.
Queste risposte potranno naturalmente essere lo spunto per le vostre domande.
Passo la parola al Prof. Landro.
To some extent, one might say that the repeated seismic, as I'm working on,
is being done very much.
For instance in the North Sea probably around more than 20 fields
this technology has been used and has created a lot of money.
If you can increase the oil production,
this is a great benefit to society
and you avoid letting oil be left back in the ground.
When it comes to CO2 monitoring,
we have seen just a few examples, so this is an emerging technology
and I hope that we will see more practical use of that in the future.
And that is dependent on political decisions most of all,
but also scientific progress,
which I hope to see maybe in the next 5 to 10 years.
Then another technique that we have worked on at my university
is being tested today and has shown promising results
but there are still problems that should be overcome.
So we have the whole range of practical results
and promising technology that needs further research.
We will continue with Prof. Stephanopoulos
One hundred and fifty years ago, when Italy was being born and - by the way,
that was also the same time that MIT was founded,
so both institutions in the countries enjoyed their 150th anniversary -
a little south of Boston there is a town called New River,
and a lot of boats were leaving that place to go hunt for whales,
because they were deriving oil for lighting from the whales,
and they would go to the end of the ocean
to find whales for the production of oil.
One hundred and fifty years later we are doing the same thing.
We are going to the end of the world,
in the Arctic, in Sakhalin Island in Russia, looking for oil
and clearly that is not going to continue forever,
so we need to find ways to sustain our thirst for energy by different means
and we need to keep in mind
are three things that we need to satisfy at the same time.
The first one is depleted or depleting energy sources,
the second one is energy security,
and the third one is to do that in a sustainable way
and minimize the impact on climate change.
We can do two of these things,
any two of these things, but the third one becomes difficult.
For example there are plenty of energy sources
in the form of heavy oils and tar sands and shale oil,
which can last for the next 3,000 years
in Venezuela, in Alberta, in Colorado, in many places all over the world.
But we cannot extract that oil without impacting
in a very significant way on the environment.
So satisfying these three constraints
is going to be a major theme of the human civilization going forward,
and at the bottom of this is to do that in a sustainable way.
Now why are biotechnology and microbes
so essential to satisfying these requirements?
If you look around you
you're going to see that nature makes plenty of simple sugars
or polymers of sugars.
If we breakdown these polymers of sugars
we still have simple sugars and that is an abundant raw material.
Now if you look at ways to convert these sugars into the things that we need,
such as energy and materials, microorganisms love sugars.
They can eat sugars in any form.
So it is our task to change these microorganisms
in a way that will allow them
to make all the materials and the energy we need from these sugars.
That's the essence of metabolic engineering;
this is the essence of recombinant DNA technology.
So this is the way by which research in metabolic engineering
is going to impact in a very significant way the energy issue,
and as Professor Somorjai said before, the emergence of green chemistry,
because the selectivity and the yields that we're going to see
through the use of microorganisms
in utilizing the simple sugars is extraordinary,
and I think it is reaching the point now at which it is competitive
with similar processes using fossil resources.
So I'm very optimistic, like I said before,
and I think this is an emerging new technology
which is going to play a very significant role in the 21st century.
Continuiamo in questa esplorazione del presente che inizia ora
quindi le applicazioni delle ricerche del Prof. Tarascon.
Ok so I'm going to try to show you what the impact is
of the type of research we are doing,
and to do so I will start by pulling some numbers,
to give you a scenario.
Nowadays we are using about 14 terawatts of in-store power
and in 2050 - that means in 40 years - we need about 28 terawatts,
so definitively we need to double our production
without really producing CO2.
So what are the solutions?
A lot of people talk about renewable energies.
They are great, but as you know, the sun doesn't shine every day
and the wind doesn't blow every day,
so we need to have energy storage.
And energy storage is really the main challenge of these next 50 years.
And to do so we need to develop better batteries for applications.
And I'm telling you well, we are developing batteries for electrical vehicles.
It's great but we should also be very careful,
because if you look at our system today,
we are using for instance, lithium as a negative electrode,
and we are using cobalt as a positive electrode,
and we know that these materials are not infinite,
so our mission is not to set up the automotive industry for another failure
by telling them that in 15 years from now,
"guy too late, we cannot make metal batteries."
So the wider research is really directed to find alternatives to lithium,
find new ways to make materials using these biochemical processes and so on.
So this more or less is the way that we try to impact
in the next 10 years and the next 20 years.
So the real problem with research is not now
but it's more positioning ourselves for the future.
Now remember I am telling you:
40 years, what are the chances that we'll succeed?
I am very optimistic, because if you look more or less in photovoltaics,
we know all the fundamentals of photovoltaics;
we know all the fundamentals of lithochemistry, but will 40 years be enough?
I think what is more important is really
how we can put this energy on a large scale
so that we can have an impact.
And to do so, I think that we need, from day 1,
to put together researchers, engineers, and users.
And the reason why I think, again, by talking about energy,
everyone claims it is a worldwide problem
- fine, that's great, but every country try to develop their own program.
And I think it's very important to develop,
to create some infrastructure to bring all these scientists together
to work together towards the real goal.
And I think it is only like that,
and we certainly have time to succeed
in reaching this value of 28 terawatts by 2050,
and of course I think these pertain to us,
but more importantly to the next generation,
and we have a mission to go around, I think,
and to motivate and generate enthusiasm in this young generation
to participate in this great adventure, challenge,
but always a challenge is full of opportunities
both scientifically speaking as well as businesswise. Thank you.
Thank you, your answers were probably very eagerly awaited,
we reminded you earlier that we are in web streaming,
so we have a web audience as well as the public in the hall,
and I imagine that this web public is
greatly interested in what you have to say.
You who are the youngest,
how do you see the first signs
of possible solid materialisation of the object of your research?.
First Fabrizio Frontalini.
We are well aware that the rapid and growing industrialisation
enriches us all but that it also produces effects.
These effects, whether on a small or larger scale
and so on a global scale are known as, at least we love to label them like this,
pollution or climate change.
Pollution has effects on all environments,
terrestrial environments, the atmosphere,
and those that are my particular area of interest, marine pollution.
Marine pollution normally appears
in particularly serious forms
that influence the whole food chain.
This is why there is a continually increasing need,
a growing demand for assessment tools,
tools to assess the state of the health of these environments,
transitional and marine environments so lagoons or coastal lakes.
The European Water Directive issued in 2000, number 60,
indicates that all bodies of water, so rivers, lakes, and seas,
must necessarily reach a good state of health by the year 2015.
But to reach this good state
so to measure this quality of good health some evaluations must be
introduced and the Directive indicates this,
that is the evaluation of their chemical state,
therefore in a traditional measure chemical analyses
of the chemical physical parameters of the water, of the sediment,
and especially an evaluation of the ecological state,
but how, well also
through the use of some organisms,
so through the use of bio-indicators.
These can be fish, phytoplankton or invertebrates.
Benthic foraminifera, which are the centre of my research
fall perfectly into this last context,
a solid element for
the assessment of the ecological state.
These bio-indicators are very sensitive, as I said before,
and in particular allow us to have
not just an instant value for the state of environmental health
in the moment we execute the sampling,
but also through, for example, performing a…
what we call in jargon taking a "core" so a small bore sample,
so in a certain sense a sedimentary record
of everything that has happened
we can establish the impact before man's arrival
therefore the original conditions, and compare them to after man's activities appear,
therefore making a comparison
of before and after the arrival of humans.
Thank you.
Now it is Simone Gamba's turn.
To talk about the possible applications of my research
I want to link back to that concept of energy mix
that Dr Mieli mentioned at the start.
I believe this energy mix,
in addition to involving research into alternative and renewable sources,
must also necessarily involve research
leading to ever more efficient use I would say even optimum use of
the resources we already have and know,
and from which we cannot be separated, like hydrocarbons.
For this reason I hope this research of mine,
the research in this field,
may constitute a first but important step
to help understand in a more rational manner, in a better manner,
the mechanisms at the base
of the production of these clean fuels,
starting from for example even natural gas.
All this to be able, in view of industrial applications
for the production of fuels from gas rather than from biomass,
to be able to permit the plants that operate with this kind of process
to obtain, starting from a certain wax,
from a certain type of supply,
the greatest quantity and quality of fuels possible.
In order to make the processes, as well as environmentally compatible
which is very important,
also competitive from an economic standpoint.
So I hope this research of mine
will contribute to improving and the development
of increasingly better performing plants
that can exploit this type of technology.
I would like to take the opportunity given by the presence of our Chancellors
to ask them the same question:
Academia and reality. The academic, and daily reality: is it a bridge?
Yes, thanks. I think the theme of mobility and sustainable mobility
can be the bridge between the academic and reality.
Much of the research that has received awards this year
have a natural output about mobility that is different to what we have now.
The eco-fuels are definitely
an element given a great deal of attention..
As you know this is a city with a
a very long history concerning the manufacture of cars
and I think that you know that FIAT was
one of the first companies in the world to build bi-power automobiles.
Bi-power in the sense that different types of fuel can
be used in the same engine,
natural gas for example and petrol or diesel, depending.
I believe that an important output of the research of our winners
is in this direction,
and I believe there is great interest
from, let us say, the community in general for this direction.
I don't know how many of you know that last year
that last year 14 million cars were sold in China
and forecasts expect the number to exceed 20 million by 2020.
Therefore the question of pollution,
the theme of finding a way to reconcile
mobility systems with our ecosystem
becomes a determining factor for the quality of all of our lives.
A second very important theme is that of the new batteries.
Definitely in the development of electric transport
through, the element of great weakness
of the energy chain as a whole
is determined by the storage system.
The research activities into the various battery technologies
that allow a wider range of usage,
faster recharging, but also a great attention to
recycling and reuse, and I think these are fundamental elements
in order for our everyday lives,
to coexist with a mobility system
that does not lead to the death of our planet. Thank you.
The emphasis on sustainability is particularly dear to the world of ENI,
its research is arranged around the key word "sustainability".
We have our professor who can certainly
complete with his observations
this first round of glances towards the future.
I believe the roles of research and advanced training are fundamental.
We have made a programme for the University of Turin
of a superior school,
with this theme of environmentally sustainable energy,
in order also to train the manager class,
which is important because if there is not
effectively any sharing from a political standpoint
and also from the perspective of managers of enterprise,
it is effectively, difficult…
then we talk about everything and then if these programmes aren't realised
I believe it is very difficult,
for the current situation, effectively additionally,
as my colleague Profumo said,
the other countries too...
we have had a development of a fifth of the planet
with respect to the other fifths, other quarters and fifths.
So now they are all growing
and obviously the environmental question becomes fundamental.
So if we do not train the managerial classes, in other countries too,
in my opinion... research also obviously
helps these themes of renewable energy and all the rest
effectively I believe the future won't be positive.
Thank you Prof. Pellizzetti.
It is the moment for questions. Here for you are… I'm sorry?
Another few words from from Prof. Somorjai…
I think the relationship between academia and society
is much broader than just the environmental issue.
There is an increasing debate in the US
on the value of education
because education is expensive.
So, there is this sticker on the automobiles
that says "education is expensive, but try ignorance" ok?
And it is clear that our unemployment in the uneducated part of our society
is much higher in the United States than in the educated part.
Clearly there are States where the unemployment - because of that -
is almost in the crisis state.
Education gives us a future, and the flexibility to do many things,
including environmental changes,
and I'd just like to broaden this concern,
not from just the environment in providing new fuels,
but the society's future is this correlation with education,
and the future of the society
is absolutely the center piece.
An observation extremely appreciated by our audience
The award winners are now available for questions,
to answer your curiosity, thank you.
Just a moment, I'll bring the microphone over…
Well, the problem has been
mentioned of the sequestration of carbon dioxide in deep layers,
what is the current state of research in this field, of realisation.
The problem is a key problem
for the use of hydrocarbons, one of the key problems.
For Prof. Landro…
I didn't get the question…
Ok, can the question be repeated please, meanwhile I'll take another question...
someone else from the public, thank you,
just a moment I'll bring the microphone over
we'll take two/three questions and then we'll answer.
But an electric car for long distances and for good speeds
when will this be available, research apart,
for the users, for us common users of the road and users from industry,
when will we have this?
For who?
Everyone.
For everyone, good.
So, let's see if the Professor can answer this question now
and then we'll go back to the other.
It depends really on what you mean by long distances.
I think nowadays we can have nearly 180-km autonomy.
This is more or less what we can have.
Now in more time, longer distances mean
that we need in this case to double, triple the capacity
of all batteries, and you know that nowadays
there is huge optimism placed on a new technology
that we call lithium air technology
and in this case we could succeed in multiplying this by a factor of 2 and 3.
So definitely the are targets of 400 km/hr that you have in mind
I think is in the next 2 decades.
Of course with this lithium air technology,
we have serious research to be doing, because we are using,
in this case, I should say the two failures of the past
in the field of energy storage;
on one side we use electrode of fuel cells
that does mean many, the most difficult part of fuel cells,
and on the other side we use lithium metal,
which has been the failure of the lithium battery
which is why we switched to lithium ions.
So I think we have extreme research going on.
A lot of venture capitalists moving into the direction.
I think we need to be careful.
We have something coming, but we are not sure
if we are going to be successful to this direction.
Thank you, could you repeat the first question
because we had a translation problem,
if you would be so kind as to repeat it, thank you.
The use of hydrocarbons causes an excess of carbon dioxide,
one of the problems is sequestering the carbon dioxide
and burying it in the deep layers, one of the ideas.
What is the current state of research
and realisation in this field.
The current state of research in the field of carbon sequestration
is that we have one or two very successful examples
then we have three or four that are struggling much more,
due to difficulty in injecting large amounts of CO2 into subsurface rocks.
So they are progressing, but there are challenges
we need to do more research on.
And one of them is what we call injectivity
- how easy it is to squeeze CO2 down into the earth -
that is one thing.
The other thing is the risk of leakage.
If we're storing CO2 say below our houses,
we don't want leakage.
It might lead to subsidence
- that the houses are not stable anymore, and things like that,
so that is another issue that we are very concerned about - leakage
And that's why in the future I think
we will see CO2 storage projects offshore,
where they don't risk damage to buildings and people,
also in very remote areas.
So that's my guess for the future.
And then, as I mentioned earlier,
it's also a big political issue, because this costs money to do this.
This is not my area of research, but I'd like to add that,
in addition to the technical issues, as you mentioned,
there are immense political, legal, and liability issues, as well.
For example the concept of pore space
and who owns the pore space,
emerged as the result of sequestration
and resolving these issues involves very long-term prospective,
involves the position of governments,
because only the government can really provide indemnification
for any kind of an accident, any kind of a leakage
that may occur 250 years from now, and in my estimate,
these are going to take a very long time to be resolved,
because they involve societies, litigation, governments, politics, etc.
Maybe, if I can put also a point,
it's not because there is some research on sequestration,
that we should keep going or even enhancing the use of carbon
as a next-generation fossil fuel,
and some people try to see this
as more or less an alibi to do this, so we should be careful there.
I have one more comment.
There is another challenge that is coupled to the capture of CO2
and that is a big challenge - to capture of CO2, say,
directly from a car.
That is not feasible today, I would say, economically.
What is feasible is to capture CO2 from a gas field
when you're producing gas,
then you can take out the CO2
and that is economically feasible today,
so what we will see in the next, say, 5-6 years
is that we do that as a beginning,
and then we have to do a lot of research on capture in CO2.
This question has really provided the chance
to explore one of the most interesting themes.
I would like to return to the question about electric cars:
mobility is according to you
a bridge between the academic world and the rest of reality,
so I must ask your opinion.
Yes. The theme of sustainable mobility is a theme with far off origins,
perhaps some of you know that the first cars were electric cars.
The difficulty preventing this technology from becoming the dominant one
was energy storage, it was the batteries.
If we compare the development of battery technology
with the development of other sectors over the last 100 years,
in reality batteries have almost maintained the same characteristics,
apart from most recent years,
with the tremendous push given by mobile phones,
by all devices that require independence
of power supply from the primary grid.
So the theme of mobility has been if you like, penalised by research
not sufficiently capable of producing results
to give this technology a possible real application.
What might the future hold? I believe this is the question.
I was very interested in
many of this year's applications for the Premio ENI,
especially by the winners,
because I believe that a transitionary stage,
a mixture of technology types could hold the answer.
In the end, what some of the winners have said to us
on one side eco-fuels, on the other side batteries,
can find a synthesis in a hybrid type of power.
Hybrid power using a type of eco-fuel
and at the same time using as the final actuator an electric engine,
which in some areas like in towns
could be directly powered by batteries
which are recharged by the internal combustion engine,
this is a solution of today,
a solution that is already on the market,
it is not on the market integrated starting from eco-fuels.
So I think this is a first step.
Following this some large car manufacturers
have proposed a date, the year 2015,
by when there could be fleets of a certain sized number
of electric vehicles that will be or could be
an integral part of our city’s mobility.
I believe though that the real element
again the element proposed by the professor
is batteries, so I hope that our young people,
our universities and our research centres, and
our large enterprises, will devote resources to this theme
that is becoming the true dominant theme.
I'm going to throw in an element:
the whole current debate about renewable energy sources
poses the same theme.
When there is no longer this link between offer and demand
concerning the theme of energy but a separation between the production and the user
there is still need of a storage system,
and we return to the theme of batteries.
Any more questions? Thank you.
Good morning, a question for Prof. Stephanopulos.
I’ll preface my question by saying I am a microbiologist
and therefore I think microorganisms
are the most fantastic catalytic system in existence,
I would like to ask a rather critical question,
or rather ask you a question I am often asked by those
who know little biology but especially little about genetic engineering
and molecular biology,
which are niches a world away from the common man.
The first question is: I am very much in agreement
that the development of certain microorganisms
capable of putting together a series of reactions
that can give a positive impact
even from an environmental perspective is fantastic,
however we know that with certain governments,
industrial level distribution is not yet permitted,
nor is the industrial level use of genetically modified organisms.
So I would like to know from you if today we want to give as read
that at a government level in every country we will be able to reach
this type of usage at an industrial level too.
In the case of a positive reply, my second question is crucial
and often asked of me and I would like to ask you
whose international knowledge of the debate is certainly deeper, is:
the use of these systems, especially in the case
of the production of bio-oils and bio-fuels,
therefore the possibility of having organisms
that hydrolyse wood and cellulose materials
for second generation fuels involves, let us repeat,
the use of genetically modified organisms,
that shouldn't...
that would be part of a process obviously
of a low environmental impact process.
In the future what will be the environmental impact
of these genetically modified organisms.
This is clearly a very important question
and it was an even more important question 30 years ago
when the first recombinant organisms were proposed.
And you know, at the end of the day
someone would ask at that time the question:
"Are you 100% sure that nothing bad is going to result
from this technology?"
And I don't think anyone can say that
I am 100% sure that I can fully contain it
and if there is any kind of release of these organisms
this is going to be ok, because we knew so little.
But now we are 30 years later
and we have a very rich record of the use of microorganisms
in a lot of different contexts.
Many of them have been employed for the production of vaccines,
for the production of Human Growth Hormone
and interferons and tissue plasminogen activators
and so on and so forth.
We are looking at a biotech industry
which is greater than 100 billion dollars.
This industry is producing life-saving compounds
using recombinant organisms,
so we cannot ignore the fact that a tremendous benefit
has resulted for the society as a result of those recombinant organisms.
Now people who are proponents of recombinant organisms,
they use the wrong arguments.
They will tell you for example that it is ok for a mother
to buy milk made by cows treated with bovine somatotropin
and that has mastitis as a result,
because that milk is going to cost 10 cents less per gallon.
I think this is a stupid argument really.
No mother would put her children at risk
to save 10 cents per gallon.
On the other hand, if we are running out of basic resources
and if we look at the record of this industry over the past 30 years,
I think that we have a very positive record all together.
Let me tell you right now
that there is a very robust amino acid industry.
Dupont is making a monomer for the production of polymers.
There are a lot of biopolymers; there is polylactide;
there are many products that are being made by recombinant organisms
- in contained reactors, following EPA guidelines
and that is not posing any risks to the environment all together,
so personally I think that it is time to reevaluate all of these policies
and sit down and discuss these issues on a rational basis.
Avoid the extremes and the hysterics, and if someone has a point
we all have to listen to this point, but if the point is simply
one of a scare tactic, I think it has to be dismissed,
because in the final analysis, it is harming the society;
it is not helping the society anymore.
And that is the kind of discussion I think we should have again,
especially in Europe, in order to determine
whether this technology ought to go forward.
If there is no such debate and discussion,
I'm afraid that Europe is going to stay behind
and it's going to be impossible to catch up in a few years from now,
because these technologies are going to be developed,
they are going to be producing oil.
Europe will be importing these fuels from other countries
because they will be indistinguishable all over the world,
and as a result the continent will stay behind in these technologies.
Take corn for example, you can't tell right now
where corn is produced, whether a hybrid was used for that;
it is a global corn market and this is the way it is.
So my point is that it is high time to revisit these issues
and have a logical, adult discussion about this
and reach a new conclusion, hopefully as to the use of GMOs.
Other questions?
Thank you, I'm returning to the theme of mobility
linked to that of energy storage,
my question is I believe particularly for Prof. Tarascon,
the point is this, an important parameter is in fact
is energy density, meaning the weight of the energy
we have to carry with us in our vehicles,
and from this standpoint if we compare
the energy density of lithium batteries, even theoretical,
with the energy density of hydrocarbons
there are almost two orders of difference.
How do you think that in the future this... can be bridge...
or at least how we can attempt to come closer to filling this gap?
This is a type of question that I may have answered previously.
If you look carefully now,
one liter of gasoline is about 2,000-2,500 watt/kg,
to a certain extent, taking in principle the Coulter principle.
Then you compare to the lithium ion
which is about 150, so the gap today is about 50,
it's not even 2, it's 50.
Now again, I think there are technologies that we are working on
pointing out toward reducing this gap
and this is what I mentioned
- lithium air technology or lithium sulfur technology
that we have been working on.
A lot of laboratories around the world, IBM for instance you know,
put in about 25 million to develop this technology,
but there is still a large amount of uncertainty with such technology.
So now we need maybe a completely different concept
of lithium ion battery by itself, we don't have it today.
So there is a huge amount of research,
but I cannot tell you for sure
if we'll meet our objectives in the next 10 or 20 years.
Other questions?
These questions are really providing the possibility to discuss
the large themes of both research and energy,
so thank you very much for these questions. Thank you.
I am a Director of a Department of the Polytechnic, that of
Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,
I am a chemical engineer and have lived through a trajectory of chemistry
that has passed through an abyss over past decades,
let's remember the problems with dioxin, Seveso,
Bhopal in India, Toulouse etc.
I have seen with pleasure how chemistry, like other base sciences,
are becoming increasingly fundamental
in making steps forward in the energy sector,
one of the strategic sectors for the future of our planet,
apart from Chancellor Pellizzetti who was a scientist before
becoming a Chancellor, in the solar energy sector
and its exploitation in photocatalytic systems,
at least 3 of the 4, actually 4, I think also one of the young engineers, 1257 01:34:13,598 --> 01:34:15,714 belong to this archipelago.
I'll stop praising my category and would like,
to ask them to what extent the interdisciplinary element was
fundamental in the path they followed and that has brought such striking results,
by interdisciplinary I mean putting together in research groups
other types of knowledge, and as an engineer, if engineering is also starting,
that is the feasibility study, an eye to the immediate future,
to also condition some fundamental research paths,
that is, if in your research you are starting to have engineers
in your team who do feasibility studies
to understand in advance which of the paths you will follow
is the most promising.
What I mean is, in the design of certain lithium battery structures,
in certain industrial biotechnological processes
for the production of pollutants, certainly in the case of Prof. Somorjai
where industrial plant planning, industrial reactors is involved,
this is already part of the DNA of chemical engineers
while the young man from Milan I believe is actually
a chemical engineer himself.
So interdisciplinary elements and the role of engineering which seems a world apart
but in my opinion becomes important in making decisions.
Is this true? I think this a question for all three of our
chemistry based scientists. Thank you.
Certainly. Interdisciplinary efforts.
This is a very important question for academia
and if you look at the origin, the history of academia,
in the 19th century it was stove piping,
so you had a chair in inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry,
physical chemistry, and no interaction,
because they were little empires pretending to work independently.
In the US now you cannot get any funding
without showing an interdisciplinary team to tackle some problem of society.
Energy conversion is clearly one of them,
pharmaceuticals are another one.
Nanosciences in catalysis had a fantastic impact of going to the catalyst
and they're all nanoparticles, enzymes, homogeneous, heterogeneous
and trying to understand and develop hybrids to solve certain problems,
and we heard about the enzyme technologies
and how successful they are.
So, interdisciplinariness is the key
and academia has to integrate various fields,
and so the broader integration of engineering and sciences
is an absolute must, because as science becomes molecular
technology is becoming molecular.
So there is a closer and closer interaction between
understanding on the atomic and molecular level
and the technology that has to be used for the meeting.
In any meetings we had the projector that put together slides
and the memory stick - a memory stick that I put in my pocket
and it has a tremendous range of information flow,
and it turns out that tunneling, quantum tunneling
is the essence of the memory stick.
And any high school student is carrying a memory stick now.
Ok so that technology would not have been possible
without integrating knowledge on a very broad scale.
But this is a moving target, I mean, there is a lot of reluctance.
Academia sometimes moves very slowly to reorganize in this manner.
I don't know how it's going to develop, but the funding in the United States
is absolutely tied to our ability to have an interdisciplinary team,
and there is big funding predicated on that.
So I think everything is moving in that direction and going quite rapidly,
so I'm very optimistic that it will happen,
but you have to look at your academic curriculum
to try to encourage it instead of just staying within your own habitat.
I'd like to offer a couple of thoughts on this as well.
Like I said before, I was educated as a chemical engineer and, as you know,
we have half a dozen courses from chemistry as a part of our curriculum,
which is an outstanding preparation
for integrating biology into the same curriculum.
So biotechnology, I think, is an interdisciplinary field par excellence.
Chemical engineers are uniquely prepared for this area
because kinetics and thermodynamics and stoichiometry
are not going to be different if the reaction takes place inside a microbe,
than if it is taking place in a test tube,
so this is happening and now biology will fill in with chemistry
to become enabling sciences
for chemical and biological engineering in the century that comes.
Why am I saying that with this certainty?
I remember many years ago when I had my first son
and I was babysitting him,
and I would put him in the middle of the living room,
and then I would turn to my papers to do some work
and before I knew it, he had disappeared
and I would look for him and he was at the fringes,
he was exploring the interfaces of one room with the other.
So he had learned all that he was going to learn
by staying in the bulk of an area,
and he wanted to go to the interfaces
and find out more stuff there.
That's exactly what's happening with us.
By interfacing with new areas of knowledge
we learn so much more
and we find so many new and rich ways
by which we can expand what we already know.
I think within the field of batteries, you know,
interface we know it, because they are
the nightmare of any electrical system.
And I think we don't know why we don't do it today, to integrate it.
As a matter of fact integration has been the main driving force of my staff
for the last 15 years.
I created one of the first European programs,
which is called ALISTORE-ERI to develop and use
all this expertise with different labs, working either on bio materials,
polymers, biochemistry, electrolyte and so on, you name it.
So we are doing integrated research.
It's the reason why even nowadays in France
we have just created another network
in order to bring not only chemists
but even users and engineers.
So, integration: we know that it is important
and we have been doing it for quite a while.
And it's going to be more important in the future.
And if some technology didn't pan out,
let's take fuel cells,
but it is a very complicated problem
and if you don't bring all the actors together,
either on the fundamental level or at the development level,
you will never succeed.
And I think now among the young society,
it is a common fact.
These young people know how to work together
and all the infrastructures are here.
And if you want to get some findings
I think you need to show integration,
because it's the only way to progress,
because in this whole issue of energy,
the bottom line is better materials to chemistry.
Ok I want to add just a few sentences.
My background is particle physics and from my experience,
I have learned most I think in the recent years
by discussions with geology.
Geology is very different from particle physics but I have learned a lot.
Then I have some warning comments.
At the university level,
we are also focusing at my university a lot about integration,
but I think it's important to learn the basic subjects first.
You need to learn chemistry, physics, math
because those are your tools and then you can broaden.
So if you start too early in the university life with this integration,
I think we do a mistake.
One last question and then we'll finish, thank you.
I'll start from the observation made by Prof. Landro
and Prof. Zecchino's questions,
for a very brief but ambitious question.
We attempt to recover CO2 in CCS and single type processes,
and we are talking about very ambitious energy paradigms.
How likely do you think it is in the opinion of the whole table,
to use CO2, using renewable energy sources,
to use CO2 as a raw material for materials
with energy applications,
what do you think about the activation of CO2
not so much to produce small quantities of chemicals,
as to "go back" to fuels for example,
I am thinking about Prof. Somorjai and his experience in the materials cience,
I'm thinking about the possible use of genetically modified organisms,
I'm thinking of possible electrochemical approaches,
or can all these considerations not be separated
from problems of recovery, purification,
transport and storage of CO2
and furthermore seeing Prof. Pellizzetti,
possible photoactivation approaches.
In your opinion how distant is an approach of this kind,
of going back from CO2 using renewable and sustainable energy sources.
Thank you.
This is a marvelous question
and I'll tell you where we stand, from my experience.
The CO2 and water are very low-energy systems,
and so if you try to do artificial photosynthesis
you need photons or some energy source.
In the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory we have the Helios project,
the Helios Institute where we try to photo-dissociate
or photo-split CO2 and water both,
and we use energy for that purpose, and it looks good.
It looks good provided you have energy at a reasonable cost.
So solar energy is obviously available,
but I thought maybe nuclear energy could be another way to go
and I'm trembling when I hear all the political hysteria around this,
because what we need is energy to do that.
Now there is an electro-catalytic approach
where you apply an external potential,
you put CO2 in that, and you convert CO2 to formic acid or oxalic acid.
Again it is predicated on energy availability.
So I think it's very doable provided the energy costs
will not kill CO2 activation or water activation.
Prof. Pellizzetti.
Yes. We have been studying the photocatalysis of CO2
and we have had interesting results,
it is true that you can't have a process that is selective,
but it is also obvious that results can be achieved if there is investment,
and this is a problem.
Excuse me
unfortunately we have the Statute Commission this afternoon...
In effect and above all research must be invested in,
we did it for solar energy so with photocatalysts,
it is then a result that could be reached, in the end,
we need to invest in research and personnel
this is the problem we must face.
Good, there are probably many other questions you would like to ask
but we must end the encounter here 1456 01:49:00,4-16 --> 01:49:05,290 and it is also the conclusion of this week dedicated to our ENI Awards,
which started in Rome, in the Salone delle Feste in the Quirinale,
President Napolitano presented our scientists with their awards,
followed yesterday with a series of Lectio Magistralis,
as has been mentioned in Rome, Catania, and Urbino,
and today's encounter in the spirit of discussion.
I really want to thank our award winners first, and the
public for their questions which have provided the opportunity
to get to know at close quarters, scientists
who probably have a fundamental message to give that is
dear to the ENI universe,
which is the message of knowing how to look to the future and help make it happen.
Thank you.