UniTO

Università degli Studi di Torino

The University of Torino (UniTo) is a long-established Italian University, founded in 1404 under the initiative of Prince Ludovico of Savoia-Acaia. With about 81’000 students and 4’000 academic and administrative staff, UniTo is one of the country’s largest and most prestigious universities. According to the ARWU international ranking system, UniTo is classified with the first 300 universities worldwide over a total of 1’200, together with 5 other Italian universities. The 27 departments of UniTo offer excellent opportunities for Italian and non-Italian academic staff, and its doctoral school provides more than 54 doctoral programs. This infrastructure is prevalently distributed within the urban area of Torino where both scientific and teaching activities are carried out (see this brochure for more information).

UniTo cooperates with international universities and institutions to develop joint research and education activities and foster professor and student exchange programs. UniTo is involved in about 500 formal agreements with universities all over the world and in several international networks.

UniTo manages roughly 500 research projects per year. The long record of participation of UniTo in the EU strategic research agenda results from 115 FP7 and 176 H2020 funded research projects. Under H2020, UniTo coordinated 40 projects and 13 ERC, out of which 3 Starting Grant, 8 Consolidator, 1 Advanced and 1 Synergy. UniTo took part in 42 Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions and 9 Research Infrastructures projects overall. In Horizon Europe, 45 projects have been financed so far: 10 of them are coordinated by UniTo and 8 have been funded under the Research Infrastructures programme.

In the framework of of the PiQuET project, the Physics and Chemistry Departments of UniTo are committed to performing research on the functionalization, fabrication and characterization of nanostructured materials and devices, for applications in micro- and nano-technologies. In this context, the “Nanostructured Interfaces and Surfaces” (UniTo-NIS) inter-departmental center represents the common platform within which the above-mentioned Departments operate in coordination. UniTo-NIS was established in 2003 to join expertise and facilities from Chemistry, Physics, Neuroscience and Biology in a truly interdisciplinary research environment. It currently includes around 80 permanent research members, plus a large number of post‑doctoral fellows.

The Physics Department (UniTo-PD) hosts research activities in various fields of Physics, in collaboration with national and international Universities and research Centers. Among the national research institutes, there are consolidated collaborations with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), the National Research Council (CNR), the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) and the National Institute of Metrological Research (INRiM). In December 2017 the Physics Department was awarded the Departments of Excellence grant by the Ministry of University and Research.

The Solid State Physics Group (UniTo-SSP) of UniTo-PD started its activity in the early 1980s in the field of semiconductor materials, with a specific applicative focus on photovoltaics and radiation detection. In the course of over 30 years, the group has significantly grown and gradually extended its field of interest to the study of micro/nano-structured materials and devices and to the development of new experimental techniques for the characterization and modification of advanced materials and art objects. In more recent years, UniTo-SSP established an articulated research program on diamond-based quantum technologies, with a specific focus on quantum communication (single photon sources) and quantum sensing (quantum-enhanced imaging, electromagnetometry, biosensing). This research effort is based on several research projects funded at extra-European, European and national levels, among which it is worth remarking: the coordinated research project F11020 “Ion beam induced spatio-temporal structural evolution of materials: Accelerators for a new technology era” supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, two Euroepan projects (BeCOMe and SIQUST) funded within the H2020-EMPIR program, and the above-mentioned “Departments of Excellence” project.