2023
On April 15, 2023, the Day of Italian Research in the World was celebrated with congratulatory messages from the Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani and some Scientific Attachés. On this occasion, four interviews were conducted with Italian researchers in Singapore: Domenico Campolo, Associate Professor at NTU and a leading expert in healthcare robotics, Federica Armas, Senior Postdoc at SMART and passionate about bacteria, Federico Lauro, Associate Professor at NTU, sailor, and marine scientist, Alessandro Luongo, researcher in quantum algorithms and machine learning at CQT.
As part of the Agreement between the Botanical Garden of Padua and the Botanic Gardens of Singapore, two events were organized on May 25 and 26, 2023, in collaboration with NParks Singapore. The first event focused on biodiversity, and the second on new acquisitions, developments, and future synergies between the two botanical gardens. Professor Livio Trainotti from the University of Padua was invited to represent Italy. Approximately 200 people participated in the events.
On June 13, 2023, in “Sala Italia” of the Embassy, the Lectio Magistralis “Cell Therapies for Cancer” was held by Professor Dario Campana from NUS. He was the winner of the 2023 Italian Bilateral Cooperation Award, an award dedicated by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the most prestigious Italian researchers working and living abroad. In 2020, he also received the President’s Technological Award, the highest recognition in Singapore. Professor Campana is a pioneer in cellular therapies for cancer, particularly CAR-T.
On June 26, 2023, with a solemn ceremony in Brescia, the Genio Vagante Award was presented to Erik Cambria, a Professor at NTU. Professor Cambria is one of the world’s leading experts in neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence, especially in Sentiment Analysis. For the first time, this award, established by the Il Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation for Italian researchers abroad, was given to a researcher not residing in North America. The Scientific Attaché participated in the ceremony.
During the Formula One Grand Prix in Singapore on September 19, 2023, the seminar “Italy Lighting-Up Singapore” was organized in collaboration with the Dino Zoli Foundation and DZ Engineering. The seminar addressed the theme of lighting in its various important applications and its multiple aspects related to efficiency, design, sustainability, and adaptability. Speakers included engineer Roberto Grilli, general manager of DZ Engineering, Emanuela Stucchi, a Lighting Designer in Singapore for 16 years, and Annalisa Bruno, an Italian researcher at NTU.
As part of the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, on November 14, 2023, an event on Urban Farming was organized in collaboration with the Singapore Institute of Technology and the Polytechnic University of Milan. The event is part of the Executive Program in Science and Technology signed between Italy and Singapore on May 4, 2023. Therefore, the seminar, within the general theme of urban agriculture, also presented the bilateral project BIZE_UrFarm approved for the triennium 2023-2025.
On December 14, 2023, the National Space Day was celebrated, and an event was organized in “Sala Italia” of the Italian Embassy in Singapore. Several videos were shown, showcasing Italy’s commitment to the space sector, followed by a scientific-informative seminar titled “Securing Earth’s Future from Space” by Professor Gianmarco Radice from SIT. Approximately 50 people attended the event, mostly experts from universities, public and private research institutions, and specialized companies involved in space activities in Singapore.
2022
On 9 February 2022, the webinar Uncovering Agriculture 4.0 – Sustainable Technologies on new technologies in agriculture was organised together with SGInnovate. On the Italian side, Prof. Gianni Ferretti, Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Dr. Chiara Corbo, Director of the Smart Agrifood Observatory and Daniele Benatoff co-founder of Planet Farms participated in the event. From Singapore, Executives from the Singapore Food Autority and the NUS Agritech Center as well as the CEO of a local startup. More than 100 people watched the live webinar, and over 200 registered. In the discussion, many common research and development elements between Italy and Singapore and possible future synergies emerged. In particular, the experience and technology of Planet Farms in Italy aroused much interest.
On 15 April 2022, as every year, the Italian Research Day in the World was celebrated, this year enriched by a message from Nobel Prize laureate for physics Giorgio Parisi. To mark the occasion, the Italian Embassy conducted four interviews with Italian researchers working in Singapore in different scientific disciplines: Prof. Cecilia Laschi, Dr. Annalisa Bruno, Prof. Roberto Dillon and Prof.. Antonio Bertoletti. Also this year, the online broadcast reached a very large audience of thousands of people.
Within the framework of the Italian Festival, launched for the first time in May and June, together with NTU’s School of Art, Design and Media, the event Documenting and Visualising Architectural Heritage: The experience of the DAda-Lab was organised on 12 May 2022, and dedicated to technological applications in the field of cultural documentation and for the management and conservation of architectural heritage. Prof. Sandro Parrinello of the University of Pavia was one of the participants who spoke in the event.
On 14 June 2022, again as part of the Italian Festival, together with the LKY School of Public Policy of NUS, a round table was organised on Whole-of-Nation Diplomacy: EU strategy in the Indo-Pacific and the Italian contribution, in which issues such as green transition, ocean governance and digital transformation and connectivity were discussed. Prof. Francesco Mancini of NUS moderated the event.
On 24 September 2022, the third online edition of Study in Europe fair was organised by the European Union Delegation to attract foreign students to Italy. This edition, with an update of all pages dedicated to Italy, involved 19 Italian universities. With the cooperation of Uni-Italia, a webinar was held to present the entire offer of Italian academic education.
On the occasion of the Week of the Italian Language in the World, on 13 October 2022, a seminar on the relationship between language and sentiment was organised in the Sala Italia of the Embassy. Invited for the occasion were Giordano Bruno Guerri, President and Director of the Fondazione Vittoriale degli Italiani, who discussed language in Gabriele d’Annunzio’s private letters, and Prof. Erik Cambria, lecturer at NTU, who presented his studies on language through Artificial Intelligence and Sentiment Analysis. For the latter, the winner of the Premio Genio Vagante (Wandering Genius Prize) was announced, which is awarded annually to the best Italian researcher abroad. The following day, Giordano Bruno Guerri gave a Lectio Magistralis to the students of the NTU School of Humanities.
On 21 November 2022, within the framework of the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, the event Childhood Nutrition: Torwards a Healthy Lifestyle was organised in collaboration with the Human Translational Research Program of Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine of NUS in which the issues and data available on childhood obesity in Singapore and Italy and the policies undertaken to combat this growing phenomenon were compared. For Italy, Prof. Mohamad Maghnie, Director of the Gaslini Paediatric Clinic at the University of Genoa, was invited. Prof. Salvatore Albani of Duke-NUS moderated the meeting. Around 150 people attended the event and as many viewed the recorded video.
As part of the events to celebrate National Space Day on 29 November 2022, a visit was organised to NTU’s Satellite Research Center and to Thales Alenia Space’s S4TIN (Smart Small Satellite System in NTU) laboratories.
2021
The continuation of the pandemic severely limited the possibility of organising events in 2021.
During the year, the online project for EUNIC: Culture | Smart City on the topic of smart cities and urban transformations in the digital era was nevertheless completed. The Italian contributors, Sara Lenzi and Ludovica Tomarchio, participated in the project at the invitation of the Embassy.
Numerous activities were carried out locally in view of the COP26 Glasgow Climate Change Conference and the Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition event in Milan. Of particular note are two events organised in cooperation with the British High Commission: the COP26 Diplomatic Roundtable on Climate Ambition organised on 23 August 2021 and the Singapore COP26 Youth Dialogue organised on 17 March 2021 and where Minister Grace Fu from the MSE also participated.
On 9 March 2021, the webinar Singapore, the research ecosystem, dedicated to the CNR community, Italy’s largest research organisation, was held to foster new forms of collaboration with Italy.
As part of the Italian Research Day in the World on 15 April 2021, four video interviews were conducted with four bright young Italian researchers in Singapore: Giorgia Pastorin, Andrea Pavesi, Eleonora Adami and Erik Cambria. The video interviews were also disseminated online on various social channels and received thousands of views.
On 25 September 2021, the second online edition of the Study in Europe fair was organised to attract foreign students to Italy. This edition, with an update of all pages dedicated to Italy, involving 18 of the most prestigious Italian universities.
2020
In 2020, due to the Covid-19 emergency, it was not possible to organise in-person events, and some of those already planned and organised were cancelled, postponed or carried out online.
In particular, the Day of Italian Research in the World 2020 with the planned participation of Prof. Iain Mattaj, Director of the Human Technopole in Milan, was postponed to a date to be determined. Prof. Mattaj was also to be accompanied by Maria Grazia Magro, HT’s Head of International Relations, to meet researchers from A*STAR and NUS and discuss possible collaboration agreements.
It was also necessary to postpone to 30 November 2020 as an online webinar the event Innovative and sustainable tools in Design for cultural heritage planned and already organised for 27 March at the National Design Centre on the occasion of Italian Design Day. On this occasion Prof. Mauro Ceconello of the Milan Polytechnic has been invited as Ambassador of Italian Design. Two lecturers from NTU and SUTD also participated in the webinar that addressed the topic of new design technologies, such as digitisation, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and virtual assistants applied to cultural heritage. The event was attended by a qualified audience including academics, researchers, museum, exhibition and art facility managers.
The Asia-Europe Sustainable CONnectivity (AESCON) Conference brought together a large number of researchers and policy analysts working in the field of international connectivity, globalisation and their impacts on sustainable development, with a special focus on Asia-Europe connections. Initially scheduled to take place in Singapore in February 2020, the conference was then held entirely online on 22-25 September 2020 The Italian Embassy was present in the scientific committee, participated in the initial selection of the numerous projects submitted and moderated the session on Transport Connectivity, which featured 6 speakers.
On 17 July 2020, Ambrosetti collaborated on a webinar on the Innovation Ecosystem in Singapore for Italian entrepreneurs with a view to a possible business mission. In the webinar, Prof. Davide Lomanto of NUH provided an overview of the research system, particularly in the medical and pharmaceutical fields.
The annual Study in Europe Student Fair was organised online for the first time by the European Delegation in Singapore on 25 September 2020. An online page dedicated to the promotion of the Italian academic-university system was set up, as well as specific pages for the 15 Italian universities that took part. The Italian pages had over a thousand visitors and remained online for a year. Two webinars dedicated to the Milan Polytechnic and Bocconi University were also organised as part of the fair.
Many of the initiatives already begun for the COP26 climate conference that was to be organised in 2020 between the UK and Italy, and for which discussions had begun with the local British High Commission with the planning of a joint event to be held in Singapore in July 2020, were postponed. In fact, only an initial meeting with leading representatives of local climate and environment institutions could be organised.
2019
On 22 January 2019, the Italian Embassy sponsored at NTU’s School of Art, Design and Mass Media, the seminar Science meets Art : how to shape the future of Humanity with Maestro Michelangelo Pistoletto, Nobel laureate Ben Feringa and the moderation of Helga Nowotny, former President of the European Research Council (ERC). Prior to the ceremony, Pistoletto’s work The Third Paradise was inaugurated at NTU.
On 18 March 2019, a day of the Italian Innovation Series was held at the Accenture Innovation hub when five Italian start-ups D-Orbit, Foodchain, D-Eye, Leafspace and Enerbrain visited. After the presentation of the start-ups, there were panel discussions on the opportunities Singapore offers in this regard and B2B meetings between local companies and stakeholders.
On 15 April 2019, on the occasion of the ‘Giornata della Ricerca Italiana nel Mondo‘ (Day of Italian Research in the World), the Italian Embassy in Singapore, in collaboration with LIBER at NTU’s School of Art, Design and Mass Media, organised the event Art meets Physics, a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci during which Italian technology developed for cultural heritage was presented by INFN Researcher Vania Virgili. Great interest was aroused by MACHINA, the first compact accelerator for the non-invasive study of works of art.
On 28 September 2019, at the Suntech Congress Centre, the Italian Pavilion for the Study in Europe fair was organised to illustrate study opportunities at Italian universities.
On 8 October 2019, as part of Breast Cancer Prevention Month, we collaborated to organise with IWG, the event: Prevention and Treatment of Breast Cancer in which Prof. Giorgia Pastorin, Director of the Centre for Pharmaceutical Innovation and Research at NUS, described the latest pharmacological and chemotherapeutic techniques with a special focus on nanotechnologies.
On the occasion of the International Week of Italian Cuisine, on 14 November 2019, the Wine upon a time event on the topic of the origin of wine in the Mediterranean area was organised in collaboration with Yale-NUS and Duke-NUS Medical School. In particular, Dr. Velasco, Director of the CREA’s Centre for Viticulture and Oenology, highlighted Italy’s leading technology in the field of genetic analysis and tracing and the vine-wine biodiversity that makes Italy a unique country in the world. The event was attended by over 200 people.
In December 2019, Prof. Luciano Maiani, former Director General of CERN, President of CNR, President of INFN, President of the Commissione Nazionale Grandi Rischi was invited to Singapore. Prof. Maiani met the Italian scientific community and held a seminar at NTU on the achievements and applications of CERN: an International Laboratory between Fundamental Science and Technological innovation. A second seminar on theoretical physics was organised at NUS.
2018
On 5 December 2018, the travelling exhibition “Italy, the Beauty of Knowledge” was opened in Singapore, organised by the Directortate General for Promoting Italian System (DGSP) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) with the contribution of CNR, Città della Scienza and four major Italian science museums. The exhibition was hosted in Singapore National Museum for the period 6-23 December and was visited by a large number of visitors. An overview of the Italian research world was also presented on the occasion.