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DESY News: SIGN: A new network for Italian scientists in Germany

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2022/10/24
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SIGN: A new network for Italian scientists in Germany

DESY and European XFEL are co-founding members

Scientists from European XFEL and DESY have partnered with colleagues across Germany to form a new national network for Italian scientists: SIGN (for Scienziati Italiani in Germania Network). SIGN, the first network of its kind for Italian scientists working in Germany, aims to support research, providing opportunities for knowledge transfer and professional networking. Acting as co-founding members of SIGN, Sakura Pascarelli, Scientific Director at European XFEL, and Francesca Calegari, leading scientist at DESY and Professor of Physics at Universität Hamburg, signed the network’s founding charter at its inauguration event in Berlin on 12 October 2022. 

Italian scientists in Germany have come together to found the SIGN network. Image: Dario-Jacopo Laganà
“We want to encourage young members of the Italian scientific community to be more mobile, to increase collaboration between Italy and Germany,” says Pascarelli, who is also the new Deputy Director of the SIGN Board of Directors. “Exchanging ideas in this way is how the scientific community can come up with new solutions to the problems we face globally.” 

The founding members of SIGN are fifty prominent Italian scientists active in Germany, of which more than 25 of them were present in Berlin. The event was opened by the Ambassador of Italy, H. E. Armando Varricchio, and of the President of the National Research Council, Maria Chiara Carrozza.

Sakura Pascarelli (newly-appointed deputy director of SIGN) and Prof. Gianaurelio Cuniberti of TU Dresden (left), and the SIGN Notary (centre).
SIGN aims to provide opportunities, support and resources for Italian members of the German scientific community at varying career levels: from undergraduate to industrial professional to academic professor. It will organize networking events, to create a greater sense of community across the expatriate Italian scientific population. SIGN also wants to act as a think-tank that facilitates the transfer of ideas between Germany and Italy.

 “Scientific cooperation is one of the pillars of the relationship between Italy and Germany,” says Varricchio, “and it can already count on the precious contribution of Italian researchers to German academia and research”. 

 “We are delighted to bring together the Italian scientific community across Germany,” adds Calegari. “This is the first step in strengthening our international collaboration, and building robust channels of exchange for ideas and information between our two nations.”  

For more information, visits the SIGN website or follow their twitter profile: @SIGNnw

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