Premio "Giovanni Paladin"

La Società Italiana di Fisica Statistica - SIFS, ha istituito il premio "Giovanni Paladin", per onorare la memoria del nostro amico e collega Giovanni Paladin.


Il premio viene attribuito con cadenza annuale ad un giovane dottore di ricerca in Fisica che abbia discusso una tesi di dottorato nell'ambito della Fisica Statistica e dei Sistemi Complessi. 


Il premio è attualmente arrivato alla sua quarta edizione nel 2024.

Giovanni Paladin, Copenhagen, 1992

BandoPaladin.pdf

Commissione giudicatrice:  Elisa Ercolessi (Presidente), Guido Caldarelli, Eugenio Lippiello

Vincitore: Dott. Marco Mancastroppa

"Per la qualità dell'esposizione, per i risultati conseguiti e per l’impatto anche esteso al di fuori del campo della Meccanica Statistica. Di tale tesi, si è particolarmente apprezzata la capacità di alternare metodologie di carattere analitico e numerico, il confronto con i dati sperimentali, la descrizione delle attività svolte all'interno del campo di ricerca in generale. "

Menzione speciale di merito: Dott. Mattia Conte 

"per l’estrema originalità e per la capacità di esportare le metodologie della Meccanica Statistica in importanti applicazioni interdisciplinari ."

Menzione speciale di merito: Dott. Gianmarco Perrupato 

"per l’eccellente rigore metodologico e la chiarezza espositiva."

La cerimonia di consegna si è tenuta il 22 dicembre 2022 nella sede della SIFS di Parma.

Commissione giudicatrice:  Vittorio Loreto (Presidente),  Leticia Cugliandolo, Tiziana Di Matteo

Vincitore: Dott. Livio Nicola Carenza

"Per gli eccezionali contributi nel campo dei fluidi attivi che coprono molti aspetti della fenomenologia complessa di tali sistemi. Dalle proprietà morfologiche a quelle topologiche, dai comportamenti dei fluidi alle caratteristiche simili alla turbolenza, Carenza è riuscito nel notevole compito di dare un'immagine comprensiva del campo ottenendo al contempo profondi contributi scientifici. La rilevanza dei risultati è testimoniata dall'estensione e dalla rilevanza delle pubblicazioni scaturite dal corso di dottorato e dalla qualità della rete scientifica che Carenza ha contribuito a formare per la  sua missione scientifica."

Menzione speciale ex-equo: Dott. Victor Buendia Ruiz-Azuaga

"For important contributions in the area of the exploitation of statistical physics' approaches to neurosciences, with a specific emphasis on how the brain works and the modelling of key features of brain functions. His thesis embraces all the mechanisms proposed so far to explain known stylized facts about the brain, including criticality, synchronisation and avalanches and it proposes a modelling synthesis that presumably will represent a reference point for future investigations."

Menzione speciale ex-equo: Dott. Lorenzo Buffoni

"For important contributions in the area of machine learning techniques applied in science. Buffoni covered a full range of approaches from classical to quantum machine learning techniques, also taking advantage of unique opportunities in the area of quantum computing. Remarkable is the attention to opening the box of machine learning to get deeper insights into the whole phenomenology and devise new strategies for learning protocols."

La cerimonia di consegna si è tenuta il 28 ottobre 2021. In tale occasione il Prof. Giorgio Parisi, Premio Nobel per la Fisica 2021, ha tenuto un intervento in memoria di Giovanni Paladin.  Inoltre il vincitore del premio, Dott. Livio Nicola Carenza, ha tenuto un seminario da titolo "Self-propulsion, Turbulence and Topological Defects in Active Fluids".

Commissione giudicatrice:  Angelo Vulpiani (Presidente), Lucilla De Arcangelis, Vittorio Loreto

Vincitore: Dott. Lorenzo Caprini

"Per la qualità e l’originalità del lavoro svolto e la chiarezza di esposizione della tesi di dottorato, e gli interessanti contributi dati alla meccanica statistica dei sistemi di non equilibrio e in particolar modo allo studio delle proprietà spazio-temporali della materia attiva."

Menzione speciale ex-equo: Dott. Matteo Borgnino, Dott. Pasquale Di Gregorio, Dott. Lorenzo Piroli

La cerimonia di consegna si è tenuta il 30 giugno 2020, in occasione dell'Assemblea Ordinaria dei Soci SIFS 2020. 

Programma_Assemblea.pdf

Giovanni Paladin was born in 1958 in Trieste. He received his education at the University of Rome and wrote his Master's thesis on the subject of 'Dynamical critical phenomena' under the supervision of Luca Peliti (1981). After the thesis he became interested in the theory of dynamical systems and chaotic phenomena, which led to the well-known work on multifractals in collaboration with Roberto Benzi, Giorgio Parisi and Angelo Vulpiani. He continued to develop new ideas within this field in a very close collaboration with Angelo Vulpiani. Since1982 they co-authored more than 60 papers, among which is a widely cited review on multifractals and a book on products of random matrices. 

After his Ph.D. at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (1987), Giovanni started his 'travelling years'. First he went for one year to the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris (1987-88) and visited the University of Chicago (1988); then, finally, he spent one year at The Niels Bohr Institute and Nordita in Copenhagen (1989-90). During this time he established links with many groups and individuals, and he kept returning to these places, where he was a treasured guest. While in Copenhagen, Giovanni and Angelo (who remained in close contact) started a collaboration on shell models for turbulence with Mogens Jensen, and this work forms an important part of a well known book. 

In 1990 Giovanni became Assistant Professor at the University of L'Aquila, and then in 1992 Associate Professor, again at the University of L'Aquila. Giovanni was a very gifted and creative scientist. He mastered the techniques of statistical mechanics and dynamical systems to perfection and was able to draw analogies between the various subjects he worked on in a very elegant and productive way. Beyond his technical contributions in research, he was also a very good teacher, with a keen interest in the education of young scientists. Six students prepared their Master's thesis under his supervision and two graduate students were working for the Ph.D. 

In addition Giovanni took great interest in scientific popularization, writing some contributions for encyclopaedias and taking part in many conferences for students and high-school teachers. He was an extremely sweet and gentle person. Wherever he went, he made close friends immediately and he maintained personal contacts very carefully. One could always speak to Giovanni about anything, and he would listen and answer in his characteristic gentle and original way, always completely honest and deeply absorbed in science, literature, art and music (in particular, Mozart). 

A funny aspect of Giovanni was his systematic absent-mindedness. He was basically able to lose anything: keys, books, papers, files, documents, money and so on. On the other hand he was lucky enough to find almost all the lost objects again. Among his friends and collaborators there was a sort of unwritten rule: it was strictly forbidden to leave the only copy of any important thing with Giovanni. 

Giovanni loved the mountains and went to ski or climb as often as he could -almost every week. There, too, he had a large group of close friends, with whom he shared many adventures. One of his last outings was a long tour climbing and skiing down the volcanoes of northern Patagonia (October 1995). The practice of mountaineering added a new dimension to the purely intellectual side of his life, making it richer and more diverse. Unfortunately, on the 29th of June 1996 he tragically died in a mountain climbing accident on Gran Sasso near L'Aquila in Italy.