Speaker
Description
Since the invention of motion picture space has inspired movie makers to create science fiction movies. With the progress of space science and technology, fiction movies are increasingly based on realistic science backgrounds. Real science, indeed, can be more fascinating than fiction. Starting from Voyage dans la lune and ending with Interstellar we will see how “Hollywood Stars” did change in the last century.
Bio
Roberto Battiston is an Italian physicist, specialized in the field of fundamental physics and elementary particles, and leading expert in the physics of cosmic rays. He was the president of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) from 2014 to 2018 and president of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) Committee on Astroparticle Physics from 2009 to 2014.
He has worked for over 30 years in international collaborations in the field of experimental physics and fundamental interactions: Strong interactions, Electroweak interaction physics, Search for antimatter and dark matter in Cosmic Rays. He is also the founder of a research group in Perugia working in the field of frontier detectors and technologies to be used in fundamental physics research – ground based and space based. In 1994 he founded SERMS (Laboratory for the Study of the Effects of the Radiation on Special Materials), devoted to the characterization of materials and devices to be used in space conditions. He was also the Deputy spokesperson for the AMS experiment, the first fundamental physics experiment approved on the International Space Station, already successfully flown during the STS91 Shuttle flight in june 1998 and installed on the ISS in 2011. AMS is the first non-CERN experiment recognised by CERN as scientific relevant and for this reason its control room is based at CERN.
Prof. Battiston is the Italian PI for the LIMADOU, to develop an energetic particle payload for the Chinese CSES satellite, and the Coordinator of the SR2S EU project (2013-15) to develop active shielding techniques for interplanetary flights. Author of more than 420 papers published in international scientific journals, and organizer of several workshops devoted to space science and to advanced technologies (Trento 1999, Elba 2002, Washington 2003, Beijing 2006, CERN 2012).
