Today's Festivities

ICTP will celebrate two key achievements today starting at 14:30. First, the recipients of the Spirit of Salam Award will be honoured, followed by the graduation ceremony for ICTP's Postgraduate Diploma Programme.

The festivities will take place in the Budinich Lecture Hall and will be livestreamed.

Spirit of Salam Awards

The 2019 Spirit of Salam awards, which were announced on ICTP founder Abdus Salam's birthday, 29 January, honour three recipients who have worked tirelessly to promote the development of science and technology in disadvantaged parts of the world:

• Jacob Palis: A Brazilian mathematician, Jacob Palis has received numerous honours for his work. His vast leadership experience includes service as a member of the ICTP Scientific Council from the early 1990s and as its chairman from 2003 to 2005. He was Secretary-General of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) from 2001 to 2006, and then was elected president, a position he held from 2007 to 2012. He also has served as president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences since 2007.
• Sandro Radicella: ICTP has been one of the world's leading organisations in making wireless-communication science and technology available to developing countries, thanks to the efforts of Sandro Radicella, head of ICTP's Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory. Since 1989, Radicella has organized and carried out colleges, schools and workshops in aeronomy, space sciences and telecommunications, training more than 2800 young scientists and university professors from developing countries.
• The ICTP Marie Curie Library: Ask any ICTP alumni from a developing country what their favourite aspect of their stay at ICTP was, and nearly all will answer "the library". In this hallowed space--which houses one of the best collections of physics and mathematical books and periodicals in Europe--thousands of scientists from every corner of the globe have researched and studied, often with the invaluable help of the library staff. Even in this era of the internet, the library continues to play an important role in the lives of our visiting scientists.

The Postgraduate Diploma Programme Graduation

At today's ceremony, 33 students from 22 countries will be awarded the ICTP Diploma after completing a rigorous year of study in one of ICTP's areas of physics offered by the programme: high energy physics, condensed matter physics, Earth system physics and mathematics.

ICTP will post photos from both ceremonies on its Flickr page as soon as possible, and a recording of both events will be accessible on ICTP's YouTube channel.