Type: International Document INT 96-49 **NSF/Europe** Report No. 80
March 1996 **A View of Italian Science**

Exposure: Public NSF

Org: INT

Date: 12/20/96

Delete: 12/20//97

Replaces: None

The National Science Foundation\'s offices in Tokyo and in Paris
periodically report on developments abroad that are related to the
Foundation\'s mission. These documents present facts for the use of NSF
program managers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF
policy.

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

E[UROPE]{.smallcaps} O[FFICE]{.smallcaps}

EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

2, avenue Gabriel

75382 Paris cedex 08, France

Tel: +33 (1) 43.12.21.08 - Fax: +33 (1) 43.12.29.04

This report is based on a visit to four Northern Italian research
institutions from 29 February to 5 March 1996 by Dr. Norbert M. Bikales,
Head, NSF Europe Office.

**General Observations**

The visit to Italy came at a moment of serious crisis. The Government
had fallen and, even after months of political negotiations, there had
been no agreement to form a successor. Whether the elections called for
April will resolve the problem, and bring forth what is already being
called a "Second Republic," remains to be seen. In the meantime, a
series of high-level and high-visibility scandals involving corruption
have rocked the country.

Of more immediate concern are the serious problems facing science.
Italy's investment in research and development is among the lowest in
Europe as a proportion of its GDP - it is 1.2% compared to 2.3% in
Germany or 2.4% in France. \[For comparison, it is 2.6% in the USA\]. In
addition, large industry in some key segments - notably the chemical
industry - has largely ceased to be a major supporter of science in
universities. The result has been an increasing reliance on funding from
other sources: government agencies and the European Community. Many
faculty members, even the most productive, experience violent ups and
downs in their level of support when large projects terminate and new
ones have not taken their place. Another problem is that government
funding has, in the words of a leading professor, been like "rain,"
i.e., nourishment widely distributed in small drops. In addition,
government funding is perceived to be excessively political, in the
sense that who you are and whom you know seem to carry more weight than
in the United States, or than in France for that matter.

The plight of young scientists is especially noteworthy. Industry does
not seem to value the doctoral degree to the same extent as in the
United States, and there is a penury of academic jobs. The retirement
age for those holding professorships is high: currently 75, with a
phasing out beginning at 72. As a result, many PhD-level scientists are
in a holding pattern, serving as assistants to senior professors while
waiting for their chance to apply for a professorship - which is done in
a national competition. The wait can be long because there are few
openings and no clearly defined path for academic advancement, such as
exists in American universities; those who succeed in becoming associate
professors are likely to be nearing their forties or even older. And
industry is not a good holding pattern, because transfers from industry
to university chairs are said to be extremely rare.

In spite of these problems, Italian science has centers of true
international excellence, as researchers continue to cope with problems
in imaginative and enterprising ways. And although the system is accused
of being too bureaucratic, it seems to be quite adaptable; Italians
relish ambiguity which they clearly prefer to the strict legalism
currently fashionable in the United States. Thus, the visitor gets a
much more favorable impression than the professors' tales of woes would
make one believe.

**Organization of Italian Academic Research**

Fundamental research and education, whether scientific or engineering in
nature, is carried out mainly in universities and *politecnicos*. The
latter, of which there are only two in Italy (Milano and Torino), are
engineering schools. Thus, the *Politecnico di Milano* has about 30,000
students - 16,000 in the several branches of engineering and 14,000 in
architecture (which presumably includes civil engineering). Most Italian
students are enrolled in state universities, which have science - but
not engineering - faculties. Support for research is provided
principally by the state agencies, notably the National Research Council
(CNR) with a budget in 1996 of IL1,080 billion (ca. \$700 million) and
the Ministries of Public Education and of Universities and Scientific
Research. For the chemistry departments in Milano, industry has ceased
to be a major source of research funds because it is in a state of deep
crisis said to be caused by long-term mismanagement of the large
nationalized companies. Although small and medium-sized companies are
thriving, they provide research funding only on an occasional basis, and
then for highly focused, short-term, applied themes. Because each
university or *politecnico* by itself lacks the resources to mount major
interdisciplinary efforts, Italy has organized some fields, for example
polymer research, as national consortia which encompass many
institutions. A consortium determines its own research program, decides
on the division of funding and labor, meets periodically for progress
evaluations, and is reviewed as an entity. The reorganization of the CNR
announced in January 1996 presumably has the same aim, namely to
organize fields across all of Italy so as to deal with them in a unified
way. These consortia can also serve to concentrate resources on subjects
having national priority. The CNR reorganization has thus selected the
following "national coordinating institutes" as being of greatest
current importance: oceanology, macromolecular physics and technologies
of synthetic and natural systems, biological systems, chemistry,
innovative chemical methods and technologies, advanced materials,
agricultural and food research, and cultural assets. Government
laboratories will be included in these institutes and efforts will be
made to involve industry so as to improve the utilization of new
scientific knowledge in Italy.

Whether this new goal of concentrating on some key areas will actually
work as expected remains to be seen. Although laudable in principle, it
meets an old obstacle: indications are that it is notoriously difficult
to terminate existing projects. One consequence of this lack of turnover
has been that success rates for applications to the CNR are said to be
about only 1 in 10, or even less. (Reportedly, the success rate was only
7% for chemistry proposals last year.). Thus, in the absence of large
infusions of new money - which seems unlikely - a major reordering of
the grant process would be needed to allow the new CNR policy to take
effect.

Many professors, faced with unreliable funding from the CNR and
virtually none from industry, have chosen instead to apply to the
European Commission (EC) for support. Typically this would be part of a
transnational proposal involving partners from both industrial and
university laboratories. EC grants, when obtained, provide a hefty sum
for five years - assuring stability for the research groups in a period
of great uncertainty. The importance of EC funding can be further seen
in the fact that academic institutions (such as the *Politecnico di
Milano*) maintain offices in Brussels to promote their proposals, and
even employ consultants to rewrite proposals. This reliance on funding
from Brussels rather than Rome is another indication of the increasing
role that the European Commission plays in research.

Italian universities have recently restructured the academic degrees
they offer, to bring them into greater conformity with European
practice. Students now spend three years at a university to obtain a
so-called university diploma which is roughly equivalent to an American
bachelor's degree. They can then obtain a "normal degree," a laureate
degree similar to a master's, after another two years of study**.** A
specialized laureate or a doctorate result from additional study and
research lasting either two or three years, respectively.

**Some Prominent Research Activities**

This account, far from being comprehensive, deals with only a few
selected areas at the *Politecnico di Milano*. Activities at another
important research center in Italy, the Joint Research Centre at Ispra,
are described in a forthcoming report from this Office on the European
Commission.

**Polymer Science.** A leading laboratory in polymer physics is lodged
in an old building that had been a factory, but has been nicely
refurbished to modern standards on the inside. Professor Giuseppe
Allegra's group of ten scientists combines theory and experiments. Their
theoretical activity deals with rubber elasticity and excluded volume in
polymer chains - classical problems that are still not fully understood.
He has developed a theory for the collapse of polymer chains in bad
solvents that predicts the behavior of single chains as well as phase
diagrams. Other areas are initiation of crystallization - an old
interest of Allegra's - and the behavior of chains between interfaces.
Relatively new is his work on the highly branched molecules known as
dendrimers and on the interaction of polymers with fillers. His
experimental work deals largely with morphology and crystal structure,
especially polymorphism and phase transitions in polyphosphazenes,
polyolefins, and polythiophenes. A major achievement has been the
structure determination of *gamma*-polypropylene, which Allegra's group
showed to have helical chains in a fully ordered array consisting of
double layers alternating in direction. This finding not only solved a
structural puzzle for a crystalline variant of a very important class of
polymers, but also challenged the long-held principle that chain-axis
parallelism is required for crystallization. \[A contributor to this
work - but on the related *beta*-isotactic polypropylene - was Dr.
Andrew Lovinger, then at AT&T Bell Laboratories, but now at NSF.\] The
group's fine x-ray and other instruments are supplemented by use of
large facilities, principally the European Synchrotron Radiation
Facility in Grenoble.

**Laser Physics.** Professor Orazio Svelto's group is, likewise, in an
old but attractively renovated building, which however is centrally
located on the main campus of the *Politecnico*. As director of the
joint *Politecnico*-CNR Center for Quantum Electronics and Electronic
Instrumentation, he oversees a group of about forty people including 7
CNR employees. The Center, a European leader in solid-state femtosecond
laser development and utilization, also has an important program on fast
radiation detectors. It recently issued reports on its research on
high-power lasers and on electro-optics technology as part of the CNR
"Finalized Projects" initiative; such projects are funded on a five-year
basis. Although very little money is available from industry for
electronics research, funds can also be obtained from the National
Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM), located in Genoa, and the
European Commission through the BRITE-EURAM (materials) and ACTS
(communica­tion) research and development programs. Professor Svelto
maintains international collaborations, including with Professor Algis
Piskarskas in Lithuania. For the twenty doctoral candidates working in
the Center, the job prospects are said to be good.

**Other Research.** Other significant research areas in Milano include
the separation of enantiomers by adsorption and the kinetics of
combustion of homogeneous mixtures (which surprisingly do not follow
simple rules of mixing), both directed by Professor Sergio Carrà, a
distinguished chemist who is a member of several honorary academies;
research on oxidation (e.g., to functionalize hydrocarbons) and on
free-radical processes and reactions (including free radicals in
biological systems) by Professor Francesco Minisci, who is the chairman
of the Chemistry Department; and vibrational-spectroscopic
investigations and development of organic optical materials by Professor
Giuseppe Zerbi, who will be given the Ellis Lippincott Award by the
Optical Society of America later this year.

**Additional Observations**

The *Politecnico di Milano* has three chemistry departments: Chemistry,
Industrial Chemistry, and Applied Physical Chemistry. Although there is
talk of consolidation, it is unlikely to take place in the near future.
Industrial chemistry deals primarily with the chemistry of industrial
processes and materials. The fact that industrial chemistry is
recognized as a distinct branch of chemistry in Italy is a clear
difference from prevailing practice in America, where courses with that
title went out of fashion decades ago. Materials chemistry, likewise,
seems to have wider acceptance as a separate branch of chemistry than in
the United States; for example the University of Torino has had a
Department of Inorganic, Physical, and Materials Chemistry since 1988.
One may conclude that Italy is attempting to meet the complaint heard
frequently in America that universities do not prepare chemists well for
careers in industry - where most graduates find jobs.

Finally, the author visited briefly the Bellagio Study & Conference
Center, operated by the Rockefeller Foundation. Located in the
attractive Villa Serbollini on a hill overlooking the scenic Lake Como,
it accepts an international mix of about 140 scholars, artists, and
scientists annually. These residents, who typically stay for about a
month each, are given free room and board in return for which they are
expected to complete some original work that will result in publication
or exhibit. The Center also hosts a few international conferences with
up to 25 participants. Applications are reviewed three times a year for
what are, clearly, choice assignments.

This report was prepared primarily for the use of NSF management and
staff. The opinions and conclusions presented are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect NSF policy.