Antonios Varnavas, Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Trieste, has passed away prematurely. 

After graduating in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology in 1987, during one of the first sessions of the degree programme, and later in Pharmacy in 1990, he joined the University of Trieste in 1992 as a researcher at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His research focused on the development of ligands for receptors of the peptidergic system. Since 2006, he had been Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Professor Antonios Varnavas supervised numerous degree theses by students of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology and Pharmacy programmes, both experimental and theoretical.

He taught continuously in the field of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, first within the degree programmes of the Faculty of Pharmacy and later within the Department, where for many years he was lecturer of Pharmaceutical Chemistry I and II in the Pharmacy degree programme.

He always carried out his teaching activity with great passion, earning the appreciation of students, who valued the liveliness of his lectures and the clarity of his explanations. The illness that had affected him, although it had greatly weakened him, did not prevent him from continuing to teach, showing an admirable dedication to his work and remarkable strength of will.

His passing deeply affects the academic community and leaves both an educational and human void for his students, who will surely remember him for his availability and for his passion for music, which often brightened the breaks during his lectures.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has presented the largest and most detailed image ever produced of the centre of the Milky Way, the so-called Galactic Bulge: an extremely bright region densely populated with stars. This extraordinary “photograph” opens up new possibilities for scientists, who will be able to confirm the possible existence of exoplanets in this region and measure their mass through the tiny variations in starlight over time.

The Euclid Space Telescope acquired this enormous image in around 26 hours. It is a mosaic made up of nine pointings of its visible-light camera, each covering a portion of the sky larger than the full Moon.

In this image, Euclid captured more than 60 million stars, together with nebulae and star clusters. This extremely populated region of our galaxy is an ideal environment for the search for exoplanets through microlensing.

The news from Euclid is extraordinary: mapping the Galactic Bulge with such precision opens up unique prospects,” commented Gabriele Cescutti, UniTS Professor of Stellar Astrophysics. “Although this specific observing campaign was designed to exploit microlensing and search for exoplanets, such a density of stellar data is also extremely valuable for our research lines at UniTS. In our Department of Physics, we have been working for years on chemical evolution and ‘galactic archaeology’. We use spectroscopic and chemical data from stars to reconstruct, through theoretical models, the early history, formation timescales and origin of the elements in the bulge and nucleus of the Milky Way. High-resolution mosaics, such as the one produced by Euclid, are fundamental to understanding the precise distribution and nature of these stellar populations.

The University of Trieste is responsible for the operations of the two scientific instruments at the heart of the Euclid mission: VIS (Visible Instrument) and NISP (Near Infrared Spectrometer Photometer). In detail, UniTS researchers hold responsibility and coordination roles in several Key Projects dedicated to the scientific exploitation of Data Release 1 (DR1), expected around mid-2027, which concerns the study of cosmology through the statistical properties of the distribution and evolution of galaxies. UniTS also contributes to the production of cosmological numerical simulations based on High Performance Computing methodologies.

Image credits: European Space Agency - ESA.

The Audace Sailing Team of the University of Trieste has once again established itself as one of the leading teams at the SuMoth Challenge, the international competition held in Malcesine, on Lake Garda, bringing together university teams engaged in the design, construction and sailing of high-performance, low-environmental-impact foiling boats.

The UniTS team completed the event with outstanding results: first place in the S1 Design category, ahead of UNICA Sailing Team from the University of Cagliari and Impetus from the Technical University of Munich; third place in the S2 Manufacturing category, behind Politecnico di Milano and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; and first place in the S3 Regatta category, with a lead of more than 20 points over the runner-up.

On the water, Audace Sailing Team successfully combined sailing expertise with the work carried out over months of preparation. After a cautious start, the crew gradually strengthened its position, securing seven first-place finishes in 17 races. The contribution of the two helmsmen proved decisive: Centuori in the regattas and Mutti in the speed tests, both able to make the most of the boat’s characteristics in stronger winds as well as in lighter conditions, when the boat was among the first to lift out of the water.

The result confirms the value of a project that brings together university education, technological innovation, sustainability and nautical culture, showcasing in an international setting the skills developed within the University and Trieste’s sailing tradition.

The SuMoth Challenge 2026 therefore ends with a highly positive outcome for the team, which is already looking ahead to the next edition with the aim of continuing to develop increasingly efficient, sustainable and competitive solutions.

Ten million cells analysed in less than two hours, with memory usage approximately three times lower than the best existing tools and speeds up to forty times faster on the largest datasets compared with the best existing tools. This is the remarkable result achieved by a group of researchers from the University of Trieste, Area Science Park, SISSA and Human Technopole, who developed DEVIL (Differential Expression with Variational Inference Learning), a new high-performance computational tool. The work has been published in Nature Communications.

Understanding which genes are active in cells is one of the keys to understanding diseases and developing new therapies. Today, the most advanced technologies make it possible to measure gene activity in millions of cells from dozens or hundreds of patients, generating an unprecedented amount of data for biomedical research. This revolution, however, brings with it two major challenges: on the one hand, the risk of errors in data interpretation; on the other, the difficulty of analysing such large volumes of information.

The first challenge is computational: analysing millions of cells requires enormous computing power. Traditional methods are too slow and consume too much memory to handle these volumes: a bottleneck that risks undermining the advantages offered by new data collection technologies. The second challenge is statistical. Cells collected from the same patient resemble one another more than they resemble cells from different patients, because they share the same individual biology, the same environment and the same personal characteristics. Ignoring this fact — as many currently used tools do — can lead to distorted statistical conclusions, with the risk of identifying as “significant” cellular changes that are not actually significant, or, conversely, of missing real ones.

To address these two issues, the researchers, thanks to DEVIL, succeeded in combining statistical rigour and computational speed in an innovative way. From a computational perspective, DEVIL, which was also developed with the support of Fondazione AIRC, was designed to make efficient use of the most advanced parallel computing architectures typical of artificial intelligence. Moreover, DEVIL is not only faster, but also uses less memory — a far from secondary detail. This means that analyses previously reserved for major computing centres can now become accessible to smaller research infrastructures and laboratories. From a statistical perspective, DEVIL addresses the problem through a Bayesian approach that correctly accounts for the structure of the data, treating cells from the same patient as correlated and therefore separating differences between patients from genuine differences in cellular activity.

“This work would not have been possible without ORFEO, the Area Science Park data centre, recently upgraded thanks to funding from Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan,” says Stefano Cozzini, Director of Area Science Park’s Research and Technological Innovation Institute. “The availability of latest-generation GPUs, characterised by extremely high computing performance, together with careful optimisation of the algorithms for this architecture, developed by our team, now makes it possible to use DEVIL to address and solve problems on a significantly larger scale. We are very satisfied: it is not often that one can rely on a team with such high-level expertise, capable of making the most of the resources acquired.”

“Differential expression, that is, the statistical analysis that identifies which genes are significantly more or less active across two or more different biological conditions,” explains Giulio Caravagna of the University of Trieste, “is a mature technology. However, the transition to single-cell analysis has introduced statistical and computational issues that make the integrated analysis of large patient cohorts complex. Our work was developed precisely to overcome this bottleneck, combining methodological innovation and high-performance computing in order to scale up to the analysis of millions of cells from hundreds of patients.”

“In the development of DEVIL, the synergy between classical and Bayesian statistical tools represents a key strength within the reference oncological literature,” says Leonardo Egidi of the University of Trieste, “and makes DEVIL an efficient computational protocol with a strong methodological characterisation. Future developments could involve spatio-temporal models for multiple patients and introduce further computational approximations based on theoretical properties that are currently under study: a valuable combination of statistical, computational and biological expertise.”

DEVIL was tested on two concrete biological case studies. In the first, focused on the identification of immune system cells, the tool proved more precise and specific in recognising relevant biological functions. In the second, concerning the ageing of human muscle tissue, it identified age-related transcriptional changes in a more stable and biologically grounded way, reducing noise and highlighting key processes for subsequent analyses.

DEVIL has been released as free and open-source software, available to laboratories and hospitals around the world, paving the way for a new generation of large-scale genomic analyses for the study of tumours, degenerative diseases and the development of personalised medicine.

Andrea Pappalardo, a student in the Master’s Degree Programme in Diplomacy and International Cooperation at the University of Trieste, has been appointed Italy’s Youth Delegate to the United Nations for the 2026/2027 mandate.

The appointment was announced by SIOI – the Italian Society for International Organization, which has implemented the United Nations Youth Delegate Programme – UNYD in Italy since 2017, in agreement with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The 2026/27 edition of the Programme is held under the patronage of the Italian Youth Agency and with the support of Reale Foundation.

Born in 2003, Pappalardo is originally from south-eastern Sicily and lives in Gorizia, where he obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in International and Diplomatic Sciences and where he is continuing his Master’s studies in the fields of diplomacy, cooperation and international relations.

His appointment follows a national selection process that assessed over 300 applications. Together with Sofia Gioria, a student at Roma Tre University, Pappalardo will represent the views, ideas and priorities of younger Italian generations at the 81st United Nations General Assembly and in the main national and international institutional contexts.

“I take on this role with a great sense of responsibility and gratitude,” said Andrea Pappalardo. “My aim will be to help give voice to young Italians, promoting the values of dialogue, cooperation and participation. I strongly believe in a culture of peace, capable of countering hatred and intolerance, and in the role that younger generations can play in shaping the present and the future.”

Pappalardo’s path combines academic education, civic engagement and student participation. He has been a volunteer with the Italian Red Cross for over six years, an experience that has strengthened his commitment to service, solidarity and the building of relationships based on trust. For the past three years, he has also been part of MSOI Gorizia, the local section of the Student Movement for International Organization, where he served as Deputy Secretary and was later elected Secretary for two consecutive terms.

The mandate of the Youth Delegates to the United Nations will begin in September with the handover from the 2025/2026 Delegates and will include, in addition to the mission to New York, the organisation of events and meetings at universities, schools, institutions, bodies and associations.

Rector Donata Vianelli described the appointment as “a source of great satisfaction and pride for me and for the entire academic community of the University of Trieste. This achievement not only rewards the talent and dedication of students such as Mr Pappalardo, but also confirms the excellence of the educational path offered by our University in the field of international relations.”

A project dedicated to Kawasaki disease, coordinated by the IRCCS Burlo Garofolo maternal and child health institute with the scientific contribution of the University of Trieste, has been awarded funding under the 2025 AIFA independent research call on rare diseases.

The study, funded with 983,000 euros, is one of 19 projects selected nationwide by the Italian Medicines Agency. Burlo will act as lead institution, with Prof. Andrea Taddio, Director of the Institute’s Paediatric Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology Unit and Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Trieste.

The project aims to assess the use of anakinra, a biological drug targeting an inflammatory protein called IL-1, as a possible first-line treatment for Kawasaki disease. The approach is also innovative from a methodological point of view: the study will use control groups built from pre-existing clinical data, which will also be analysed through artificial intelligence tools.

Kawasaki disease is a rare inflammatory condition in children that affects blood vessels, particularly the coronary arteries, and can lead to cardiac complications. The standard treatment is intravenous immunoglobulin therapy, but a significant proportion of patients — around 20–25% — do not respond adequately, increasing the risk of severe clinical outcomes.

The aim of the study is therefore to generate new evidence on the efficacy of anakinra, while also assessing its safety, tolerability, impact on hospital stay and overall clinical outcomes.

“Receiving almost one million euros in funding is an important recognition of the scientific quality of the project and of the ability of the centres involved to work together on complex clinical challenges. The aim is to generate new scientific evidence that can translate into better treatment opportunities for children affected by this rare disease,” says Prof. Andrea Taddio, scientific coordinator of the project.

“Being included in the national AIFA ranking attests to the value of the clinical research developed by the network of professionals at our IRCCS and by the institutions collaborating within the Incipit Consortium. This result confirms the effectiveness of participatory research in generating innovation and new opportunities for patients,” says Anna Arbo, Director of the Hospital Pharmacy at Burlo.

The study was developed with the contribution of Prof. Gabriele Simonini, Director of the Paediatric Rheumatology Unit at the Meyer University Hospital IRCCS in Florence, and Prof. Marco Cattalini, Head of Paediatric Rheumatology at the ASST Spedali Civili di Brescia.

The Final Report of the Research Quality Assessment 2020–2024 (VQR4) by ANVUR — the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes — ranks the University of Trieste first among Italian universities in the following scientific disciplinary sectors:

- Architectural and urban design
- General and inorganic chemistry
- Medical genetics
- Physics applied to life sciences, the environment and cultural heritage
- Social psychology

UniTS also ranks second in the following sectors:

- Physical chemistry
- Stratigraphic and sedimentological geology
- Pathological anatomy
- Cardiovascular diseases

“The result of the latest ANVUR assessment reflects a University whose overall evaluation of publications is above the national average, one that promotes deserving researchers and, above all, acts as a hub for research with a strong impact on society,” comments Paolo Fornasiero, Vice-Rector for Research. “The latest data presented may also be underestimated, as disciplines involving only a small number of researchers, or those that did not submit at least 10 scientific works, are not included in the report for privacy reasons.”

The Final Report confirms the data released by ANVUR on 16 April: not only is the average evaluation of the 1,789 publications submitted for assessment higher than the national average, but in terms of knowledge valorisation — namely the impact of research on the local area and society — the University ranks sixth.

VQR4 assesses the results of scientific production, knowledge valorisation activities, the ability to attract competitive international projects and, for the first time on an experimental basis and limited to research bodies and voluntary institutions, research infrastructures.

An international study has revealed a new piece of Mars’ geological puzzle. The research, led by Brock University (St. Catharines, ON, Canada), in collaboration with the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, ON, Canada) and with the contribution of the University of Trieste, has identified for the first time the presence of garnet in a Martian meteorite, opening up new perspectives on the complexity of the processes that shaped the Red Planet.

The study, published in the international peer-reviewed journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters of the European Association of Geochemistry, involved Ana Černok, a researcher at the University of Trieste.

Garnet is a very common mineral on Earth, often associated with metamorphic rocks and with processes occurring under conditions of high temperature, high pressure or in the presence of hot fluids. Until now, however, it had never been recognised in samples from Mars or directly on the Martian surface. Its identification therefore expands the known mineralogical diversity of the planet and suggests the possibility that Mars may have undergone more complex geological processes than previously documented.

The sample analysed is a fragment of the Martian meteorite NWA 8171, preserved in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum. During the mineralogical and chemical analyses, the research team identified an unexpected composition, initially attributed to a more common mineral such as pyroxene. Further investigations, carried out using specialised instruments, made it possible to recognise the presence of garnet.

The discovery could point to the existence of a previously unknown type of Martian rock, formed through metamorphic or metasomatic processes, or through new forms of magmatic differentiation. The authors of the study, however, remain cautious: further investigations will be required, particularly into the isotopic signatures of the sample, to establish whether the garnet actually formed on Mars or whether it has an “extra-Martian” origin, linked to a celestial body that was later incorporated into the planet’s surface.

Ana Černok’s contribution focused on the mineralogical and geochemical interpretation of the sample, drawing on her expertise in the study of meteorites and planetary materials. The scientific collaboration originated within the doctoral research of the first author, Tanya Kizovski, then based at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and now a faculty member at Brock University. Černok contributed to this work as a member of the supervisory team and as a scientific mentor.

“If chemical elements are the letters of the alphabet, then minerals are the words through which planets tell their story,” explains Ana Černok. “Discovering a new mineral on another world is like finding a lost word from an ancient language. Garnet tells us that Mars experienced more complex geological processes than we previously thought, adding a new piece to the story of its evolution.”

The work is the result of an international collaboration involving institutions from Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy, including Brock University, the Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Toronto, the University of Portsmouth, The Open University and the University of Trieste.

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The study Expanding Mars’ lithologic diversity: discovery of a garnet-bearing clast in NWA 8171 was published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters.

Publication link: https://doi.org/10.7185/geochemlet.2619

A study published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences has unexpectedly found that rhythmic passive movements, such as rocking or carrying-like motions, can change the emotional state of domestic chicks, inducing both calming and pleasurable responses. The study, conducted by Cinzia Chiandetti, Andrea Dissegna and Paolo Gallina from the University of Trieste, and Lorenzo Scalera from the University of Udine, investigates the effects of rhythmic motion in animals outside the mammalian class.

In mammals, slow rhythmic passive motion has long been recognized as an important component of parental care: it can reduce crying, lower heart rate and promote sleep. In humans, anecdotal observations also suggest that faster rhythmic movements in babies and young children, such as playful tossing in the air, swinging or rides such as roller coasters, can elicit pleasure and excitement.

To test whether these effects also occur outside mammals, and to understand when motion shifts from a primarily calming function to a potentially pleasurable one, the research team observed domestic chicks while they were being rocked. The use of chicks to study this phenomenon is unprecedented: these animals are able to walk immediately after hatching and, unlike mammalian infants, are not carried by their mother.

During the experiment, individual chicks were placed inside an opaque box attached to a precision robotic arm, programmed to reproduce rocking and carrying-like motions while varying their frequency — slow or fast — and direction — horizontal or vertical. The animals’ emotional state was monitored non-invasively by recording their vocalizations.

The results show that slow rocking and slow carrying-like movements reduce so-called “contact calls”, vocalizations associated with discomfort, isolation or separation. This finding mirrors the calming effects of maternal carrying already documented in mammals.

A particularly significant result, however, concerns the possibility that specific forms of rhythmic movement can also induce a positive response. When the chicks were exposed to fast horizontal rocking or fast carrying-like movements, they emitted a significantly higher number of affiliative vocalizations — so-called brood calls — which are usually produced in safe and socially positive contexts and are considered indicators of a pleasurable state.

Taken together, the findings suggest that the calming effects of carrying and rocking observed in mammals may stem from a widespread sensitivity to rhythm and motion in animals.

As the study’s authors note: “Our findings expand the functional scope of rhythmic stimulation, positioning it as a regulator of affect with both calming and pleasurable dimensions across vertebrate lineages.”

Because chicks do not experience maternal carrying in their natural history, their sensitivity to rhythmic movement appears to reflect a deeply conserved mechanism across vertebrates, rather than a response to specific parental care strategies.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences is a multidisciplinary journal with more than two centuries of history, publishing high-impact research articles, reviews and perspective pieces dedicated to significant advances across all areas of scientific knowledge.

The journal is truly multidisciplinary in scope and welcomes contributions from researchers worldwide in the life sciences, physical sciences, social and behavioral sciences, environmental sciences, and the intersections among these fields.

www.nyas.org

Research at the University of Trieste is entering the heart of the international debate on the new geographies of global security. Federico Donelli, Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political and Social Sciences – DiSPeS, has been appointed Research Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington for the 2026–2027 year.

The prestigious U.S. center, established by the United States Congress in 1968 as the national memorial to President Woodrow Wilson, is today one of the leading places of exchange between research, geopolitical analysis and public policy. Its mission is to provide institutional decision-makers and the public with independent, nonpartisan insights on major issues in international relations, fostering dialogue between academia, institutions and policy-making.

The new class of Research Fellows, officially presented in Washington on June 9, brings together scholars, experts, journalists and public intellectuals selected through an international competitive process. The fellows will work on research projects designed to connect scientific production with the main challenges of contemporary foreign policy.

In this context, Donelli will develop the project “Great and Middle Power Competition in the Red Sea: Hybrid Security Orders and U.S. Strategic Interests”, dedicated to competition between great and middle powers in the Red Sea region and its implications for political, economic and security balances.

The Red Sea is currently one of the most sensitive passages in the global scenario: an essential maritime corridor between the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific, where strategic, commercial and military interests are increasingly intertwined. The research will analyze the role of actors such as the United States, China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, examining how their presence interacts with fragmented local contexts and hybrid forms of security governance.

At the center of the project there will therefore be not only competition between powers, but also the ways in which local actors adapt to, respond to and at times exploit external involvement, helping to redefine regional orders. The research will be based on qualitative analysis, interviews, fieldwork and the study of available documentation.

The results will lead to an academic study and a Wilson Center monograph also addressed to policymakers, with the aim of offering evidence-based interpretations and recommendations.

The appointment represents an important international recognition of Donelli’s scientific work, particularly in the study of transformations in global balances. His research focuses on international politics and security in the Middle East and Africa, with particular attention to the strategies of regional and extra-regional actors.

Donelli is the author of articles published in international journals including International Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Small Wars & Insurgencies and The International Spectator. His publications also include the volumes Turkey in Africa: Turkey’s Strategic Involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa and Power Competition in the Red Sea: Testing the Post-Liberal International Order.