Italian scientists win prestigious awards for neutrino research and computational chemistry

Mattia Atzori Corona, a 29‑year‑old research associate at INFN’s section of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, was awarded the Bruno Rossi prize for his thesis on neutrino interactions and their relevance to dark matter, and also received the Stanghellini prize from the Italian Physical Society. His work focuses on neutrino detection experiments such as Nucleus and Gaia, aiming to shed light on the nature of dark matter.

GiovanniMaria Piccini, professor of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, earned the Walter Thiel Award 2026 from the European Chemical Society for pioneering molecular‑simulation methods that combine quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics and artificial intelligence. He is the first Italian recipient of the award, which includes a plenary lecture at the EuChemS CompChem 2027 conference in Cluj‑Napoca, Romania, and a feature article in Chemistry – A European Journal.