ITALIAN SCIENTISTS & SCHOLARS IN NORTH AMERICA FOUNDATION
Connecting, Empowering, Celebrating the Italian Intellectual Diaspora
ISSNAF, the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation, annually awards the Young Investigator Awards in various disciplines to outstanding, early-career Italian researchers working in the United States or Canada, in recognition of their significant and innovative contributions to their field of research.
ISSNAF is very pleased to announce the Young Investigator Awards of 2023 and is grateful to their sponsors for their generosity.
Warmest congratulations to the 2023 winners and finalists on their achievement!
EMBASSY OF ITALY AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES
Established in 2020, this year’s edition recognizes young Italian researchers in the USA providing fundamental contributions to the understanding and curing of neurodegenerative diseases including those related to aging.
WINNER
Francesca Garretti, Postdoctoral Fellow, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai;
Application Title: ”Investigating the impact of disease risk-modifying variants on microglia function”
FINALISTS
Simone Brioschi, Instructor, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine;
Application Title: “Study of brain immune cells, during development, homeostasis, and disease”
Roberta Peruzzo, Postdoc, University of California, Berkeley;
Application Title: “Mitochondria and lysosomes as therapeutic targets in neurodegeneration”
Chair
Prof. Alex Sette, La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Jury
Prof. Cristina Alberini, New York University
Prof. David Hafler, Yale University
Dr. Ekemini Riley, Coalition for Aligning Science
WATCH THE EMBASSY OF ITALY AWARD SYMPOSIUM
FRANCO STRAZZABOSCO AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN ENGINEERING WITH FOCUS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
Established in 2013 by the Strazzabosco family in memory of Dott. Ing. Franco Strazzabosco, this award is a tribute to the entrepreneurial courage of Italian engineers who strive to apply scientific discoveries to the public advantage.
WINNER
Luigi Osmieri, Staff Scientist, MPA-11 Materials Synthesis and Integrated Devices, Los Alamos National Laboratory;
Application Title: “Catalysts and electrodes for affordable hydrogen generation and utilization”
FINALISTS
Matteo Bertagni, Postdoc, Civil and Environmental Engineering & High Meadow Environmental Institute, Princeton University;
Application Title: “Environmental and climate trade-offs of hydrogen energy”
Lorenzo Rosa, Staff Scientist, Carnegie Institution for Science, and Assistant Professor, Stanford University (by courtesy);
Application Title: “Achieving Net-Zero Energy Emissions in Agriculture through Innovations in Fertilizers and Irrigation”
Chair
Prof. Alberto Salleo, Stanford University
Jury
Dr. Emanuele Pecora, US Dept. of Energy
Prof. Guglielmo Scovazzi, Duke University
Prof. Natalie Stingelin, Georgia Institute of Technology
WATCH THE FRANCO STRAZZABOSCO AWARD SYMPOSIUM
INFN BRUNO TOUSCHEK AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS
Established in 2022 by Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, this award honors the memory of Prof. Bruno Touschek for his pioneering work in the fields of elementary particle physics and particle accelerators. It recognizes contributions in the fields of fundamental interactions of matter, such as elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, cosmology and the physics of particle beams.
WINNER
Chiara Trovatello, Postdoctoral Researcher, Columbia University;
Application Title: “Bridging macroscopic and microscopic nonlinear optics with layered semiconductors”
FINALISTS
Sofia Fatigoni, Postdoctoral Scholar, Caltech;
Application Title: “Constraining the Inflationary Universe from the South Pole”
Simone Mazza, Assistant Project Scientist, UC Santa Cruz;
Application Title: “Critical detector development for high energy and nuclear physics”
Co-Chairs
Prof. Giorgio Gratta, Stanford University
Prof. Patrizia Rossi, Jefferson Lab
Jury
Prof. Giorgio Gratta, Stanford University
Prof. Patrizia Rossi, Jefferson Lab
Emilio Nanni, Stanford University
WATCH THE INFN BRUNO TOUSCHEK AWARD SYMPOSIUM
MARIO GERLA AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
Established by the Gerla family in 2019, this award is in memory of Dr. Mario Gerla, pioneer in computer networking, professor of Computer Science at UCLA, and ISSNAF founding member.
WINNER
Giulia Guidi, Assistant Professor, Cornell University;
Application title: “Scalable and Diverse Data Analytics - through High-Performance Abstraction”
FINALISTS
Alessandro Achille, Senior Applied Researcher, AWS AI Labs;
Application title: “Dynamics of Information acquisition and machine unlearning in deep networks”
Giovanni Paolini, Senior Applied Scientist, AWS and Caltech;
Application title: “Generative AI to solve complex problems in language and mathematics”
Chair
Prof. Elisa Bertino, Purdue University
Jury
Prof. Elisa Bertino, Purdue University
Prof. Ferdinando Fioretto, Virginia University
Prof. Anna Squicciarini, Pennsylvania State University
WATCH THE MARIO GERLA AWARD SYMPOSIUM
PAOLA CAMPESE AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN HEMATOLOGIC MALIGNANCIES
Established by Stefania and Vito Campese in 2011, this award is in memory of their young, talented and generous daughter Paola.
WINNER
Eugenio Morelli, Lead Scientist, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute;
Application title: "Unlocking the therapeutic potential of noncoding RNAs in multiple myeloma
FINALISTS
Guido Ghilardi, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania;
Application title: "Improving Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapy against Lymphoma"
Elisa Mandato, Instructor in Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute;
Application title: "Targetable vulnerabilities in genetically defined diffuse large B-cell lymphoma subsets"
Chair
Prof. Riccardo Dalla-Favera, Columbia University
Jury
Prof. Riccardo Dalla-Favera, Columbia University
Prof. Simona Colla, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Prof. Laura Pasqualucci, Columbia University, Università di Perugia
WATCH THE PAOLA CAMPESE AWARD SYMPOSIUM
RnB4CULTURE AWARD
FOR INNOVATION IN THE STUDY OF ITALIAN CULTURE
Established in 2021 by RnB4Culture, this award recognizes the vibrancy of research in Italian culture and its evolving nature expressed in a variety of ways such as innovative uses of technology, or originality of approach, or contribution to wider questions and trends in the Humanities at large.
WINNERS EX-EQUO
Filippo Gianferrari, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Cruz;
Application Title: “Political Charity: Vernacular Theories of the Common Good”
Angelica Pesarini, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto;
Application Title: “Making Visible the Invisible. Counter Body-Archives and Resistance in (Post)Colonial Italy”
FINALIST
Giancarlo Tursi, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Barbara;
Application Title: “Transnational Dialects: For a New Linguistic Cartography”
Chair
Prof. Claudio Fogu, University of Santa Barbara
Jury
Prof. Dario Brancato, Concordia University
Prof. Gabriella Romani, Seton Hall University
Prof. Filippo Trentin, University of Pennsylvania
WATCH THE RnB4CULTURE AWARD SYMPOSIUM
PRIZES
- Winners receive a prize of $3,000.
- Winners and Finalists are invited to attend the ISSNAF Annual Event 2023 at the Embassy of Italy in Washington and receive a travel and lodging award.
- Winners and Finalists receive public recognition of their accomplishments via the ISSNAF social media.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
1) Italian citizenship;
2) Current affiliation with a research institution in the United States or Canada, with the exception that applicants for the Embassy of Italy Award must work in the USA;
3) PhD received or Medical/Veterinary Residency completed in 2016 or later.
ISSNAF reserves the right to exclude any applicants not meeting standards of good scholarship and integrity.
PROCESS
Applications are evaluated considering the applicant’s curriculum, the quality and impact of their research, their personal contributions to the research, and two letters of reference. Three Finalists are named for each of the Awards.
The Finalists present their research to the distinguished Award Jury at the virtual Young ISSNAF Symposia to be held in October 16-20, 2023. The Jury names the Award Winner. The Symposia are open to the public.
The Winners are announced and receive their award at the ISSNAF Annual Event on November 8, 2023
TIMELINE
- May 27, 2023 Call is open
- July 30, 2023 Call is closed (deadline has been extended)
- July 30, 2023 Letters of reference are due
- August 8, 2023 Applicants are notified whether their application has been accepted
- September 29, 2023 Applicants are notified whether they have been named Finalists
- October 16-20, 2023 Finalists present their research at the Young Investigator Symposia
- November 8, 2023 Winners receive their Award at 2023 ISSNAF Annual Event
WINNERS & FINALISTS
EMBASSY OF ITALY AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES
Francesca
Garretti
WINNER
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Dr. Francesca Garretti is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Alison Goate in the Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s disease at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Her research focuses on investigating the effects of genetic risk factors associated with Alzheimer’s disease on induced pluripotent stem cell derived microglia function. She completed her PhD in Pathobiology and Molecular Medicine at Columbia University where she was co-mentored by Dr. David Sulzer and Dr. Dritan Agalliu. During her PhD, she uncovered alpha-synuclein autoimmunity driven by T cells and specific immune alleles in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. In addition, she modeled alpha-synuclein autoimmunity in mice to show that it is a driver for enteric inflammation and neurodegeneration and prodromal symptoms of PD. She received her BSc with honours in Biochemistry from the University of St. Andrews, UK and MSc in Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Francesca has co-authored 8 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited over 800 times and has given numerous invited talks and seminars. She currently holds an F32 Kirschstein-NRSA fellowship from the National Institute of Aging.
Simone
Brioschi
FINALIST
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
During my postdoc I conducted a seminal study describing composition and origin of meningeal B cells in health and aging. This research showed that skull-derived B cells infiltrate the meninges at initial stages of their development (pro-B and pre-B cells) and locally accomplish their differentiation process. By contrast, blood-derived age-associated B cells (ABCs) accumulate in the mouse meninges during aging. We proposed that meningeal adaptive immunity is tailored to the local antigen repertoire to maintain immune privilege within the CNS. As a future study, I propose to investigate the composition and clonality of meningeal B cells in models of autoimmunity, like Lupus. Alongside, I generated a novel Cre line targeting microglia and BAMs specifically after the infiltration of the brain rudiment. I used this tool to delete the transcription factor SMAD4 in microglia and BAMs during early stages of embryonic brain development. Deletion of SMAD4 impaired microglia specification, producing broad transcriptomic changes and epigenetic remodeling. By contrast, BAM specification program was unaffected. Furthermore, mice with SMAD4-deficient microglia exhibited impaired learning and memory skills, indicating that a physiological microglia maturation during embryonic development is crucial for brain functions. I am currently investigating the role of PU.1 in microglia during amyloid pathology.
Roberta
Peruzzo
FINALIST
University of California, Berkeley
Roberta studied Molecular Biology at the University of Padova (Italy), where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s Degree in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
After a year as a postgraduate researcher in which she delved into mitochondrial studies, Roberta pursued a Ph.D. in Biosciences at the University of Padova and obtained her degree in 2020. Working in Prof Ildikò Szabò’s laboratory, she investigated how mitochondrial ion homeostasis impacts cell viability and how its modulation via pharmacological tools can be used to treat neurological and metabolic diseases. Her discovery was patented in 2021.
In 2021, Roberta was awarded the AIRC (Italian Association for Cancer Research) Fellowship and joined Prof Roberto Zoncu’s laboratory at the University of California Berkeley for her postdoctoral studies. Here, she applied her expertise to a different organelle, the lysosome, and shifted her research emphasis on neurodegenerative diseases driven by lysosomal dysfunction. Specifically, Roberta is combining different approaches to determine how the master regulator, mTORC1 kinase, regulates autophagy, a lysosome-dependent pathway defective in multiple neurodegenerative diseases. Moreover, she is developing innovative chemical biology approaches to enhance the ability of autophagy and lysosomes to degrade neurotoxic protein aggregates.
Roberta is author of 26 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.
FRANCO STRAZZABOSCO AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN ENGINEERING WITH FOCUS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
Luigi
Osmieri
WINNER
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Luigi Osmieri received the B.Sc. (Laurea), M.Sc. (Laurea Specialistica) and Ph.D. (Dottorato di Ricerca) in chemical engineering from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. The topic of his Ph.D. research was the development and testing of precious metal-free electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction with application to low temperature fuel cells. After graduating, he worked as a research assistant at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and at the Politecnico di Torino. In 2017 he moved to the U.S.A. to join the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher. In October 2020 he was awarded the “Department of Energy Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office’s Postdoctoral Recognition Award” (runner-up). In November 2020 he joined Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was awarded the prestigious Director’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in June 2021, and then promoted to Staff Scientist in January 2023. Dr. Osmieri’s main research interests are precious metal-free electrocatalysts, electrode engineering, and electrochemical diagnostics with application to low-temperature electrochemical energy conversion devices such as polymer electrolyte fuel cells and electrolyzers. He is the author of 38 publications, with more than 1750 citations and an H-index of 24.
Matteo
Bertagni
FINALIST
Princeton University
Matteo Bertagni is an environmental engineer who is passionate about science and nature. He did his bachelor's at the Universita' di Trieste (Italy) and then a master's and Ph.D. at the Politecnico di Torino (Italy). He joined Princeton University as a postdoctoral researcher at the Carbon Mitigation Initiative in 2020. His current research focuses on the potential and limitations of low-carbon energy solutions and climate change mitigation strategies. He hopes the world can limit climate change without developing new environmental problems.
Lorenzo
Rosa
FINALIST
Stanford University
Lorenzo Rosa is a Principal Investigator at Carnegie Institution for Science and an Assistant Professor (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from University of California Berkeley, and a B.S. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy.
Dr. Rosa's research program quantifies the potential benefits and unintended climate and environmental consequences of innovations engineered to satisfy the increasing global demands for energy, water, and food. He quantifies the challenges posed by climate change to agriculture and assesses various strategies for reducing the environmental impacts of farming. Dr. Rosa has produced impactful and actionable research that informs sustainable development policies as well as investments to promote food, energy, and water security.
Dr. Rosa’s contributions to science and society have been recognized through multiple awards, including the 2019 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Hydrology Research Grant and the 2021 AGU Science for Solutions Award. The latter award is given for his contributions to understanding global water-energy-food linkages and solutions to benefit humanity and nature. He was also listed among the most influential young leaders in Science and Technology of the year 2020 by Forbes 30 Under 30.
INFN BRUNO TOUSCHEK AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS
Chiara
Trovatello
WINNER
Columbia University
Born and raised in Siracusa, Italy, Chiara Trovatello moved to Milan, Italy, at the age of 18 for her studies at Politecnico di Milano (Bachelor and Master of Science in Engineering Physics, and Ph.D. in Physics). During her doctoral studies, CT visited the University of Wurzburg. Additionally, she was awarded a Marie Curie RISE Fellowship to visit Columbia University. After her Ph.D., CT returned to Columbia as a Postdoc, and was awarded the Couillaud Prize by the Optica Foundation and Coherent for her contributions in the field of ultrafast optics with 2D materials. This year, CT received the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to conduct independent research at Columbia University, with the goal of developing and characterizing ultracompact platforms for quantum optics based on layered semiconductors.
CT has delivered >30 invited and contributed talks at leading conferences and institutions, has published >25 scientific papers including several in the highest-impact journals in the field, and she has been part of the organizing committee of international conferences, e.g., MRS, CLEO. CT is the Founder and the former President of the Optica Chapter of Milan. Within the Chapter and beyond, CT passionately advocates for open science, ethical research, equal representation and opportunities in STEM.
Sofia
Fatigoni
FINALIST
Caltech
I was born in Perugia (Italy) in 1993, where I studied at the Liceo Classico A.Mariotti. During those years, despite the few monthly hours of Physics, I spent most of my time building batteries and circuits, which are conserved in the school museum.
In 2012 I moved to Rome to study in La Sapienza. I studied in Physics, for my bachelor degree, and Astrophysics for my master degree. In 2017 I moved to Vancouver for my PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and started working on the BICEP Array telescope, designing part of the hardware.
During these years I have also started my own data analysis project, and invented a new method to clean our Cosmological data from atmospheric noise, which is one of the main challenges for high precision ground experiments.
As part of the BICEP Array hardware team, that is the group of people that designed and built the receivers, I took part to two Antarctic missions to deploy these receivers at the South Pole. Since 2022 I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech, where I keep on working on BICEP Array, but also on new technology development for the next generation of Cosmic Microwave Background telescopes.
Simone
Mazza
FINALIST
UC Santa Cruz
I'm an assistant project scientist at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). My current physics research plan is mainly focused on the study of lepton flavor universality by the observation of rare pion decays, I’m very involved in an emerging pion decay experiment, the PIONEER experiment, that will run at the PiE-5 pion beamline at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). For PIONEER, I’m developing the high granularity active target (ATAR). I'm also very interested in the physics at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) that is going to be built at Brookhaven national Laboratories (BNL). For the EPIC detector at EIC I'm leading on the silicon sensor development for the timing layer at UCSC. My expertise is silicon sensors and, in particular, ultra-fast silicon sensors known as low gain avalanche detectors (LGADs) that allow a timing resolution per hit down to 20 ps. In my free time, I love surfing and mountain biking in the beautiful Santa Cruz County.
MARIO GERLA AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
Giulia
Guidi
WINNER
Cornell University
Giulia Guidi is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University in the Bowsers College of Computing and Information Sciences (CIS) and is a member of the Graduate Field of Computational Biology and Applied Mathematics in addition to Computer Science. Professor Guidi’s work focuses on high-performance computing for large-scale computational sciences. Guidi received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California Berkeley in 2022. Professor Guidi is part of the Performance and Algorithms Research Group in the Applied Math and Computational Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, where she is currently Affiliate Faculty.
Alessandro
Achille
FINALIST
AWS and Caltech
I am an Applied Scientist working in computer vision and deep learning at Amazon AI (Pasadena) and Caltech (visiting scholar). I graduated in 2019 from the Computer Science Department of UCLA, working with Prof. Stefano Soatto in the Vision Lab. During my PhD I have also been a research scientist intern at Deep Mind and Amazon AI. My research interests include representation learning, information theory, multi-task learning and variational inference.
Before coming to UCLA, I obtained a Master in Pure Math at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa, where I studied model theory, algebraic topology, and their intersection with Prof. Alessandro Berarducci, with particular focus on definable groups in o-minimal theories. During that period, I have also been a visiting student at the University of Leeds Math department.
Giovanni
Paolini
FINALIST
AWS and Caltech
I am a mathematician and machine learning scientist. I earned my Ph.D. from Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, working at the intersection of combinatorics, topology, and group theory. During my studies, I ventured into machine learning, and this led me to a role as an applied scientist at Amazon Web Services (AWS), based in a lab located at Caltech. Over my four years at AWS, I got increasingly involved in natural language processing and in the development of language models. Now, I've taken on a new chapter as a faculty member at the University of Bologna, where my aim is to fuse my passion for mathematics and machine learning, exploring the fascinating crossroads between these two fields.
PAOLA CAMPESE AWARD
FOR RESEARCH IN HEMATOLOGIC MALIGNANCIES
Eugenio
Morelli
WINNER
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Eugenio Morelli, MD, is a hematologist-oncologist fully committed to basic and translational cancer research. He currently works as Lead Scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and is a Research Associate at Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA, USA).
Morelli received his medical degree at Magna Græcia University, Catanzaro, Italy in 2011. He completed his specialty in Medical Oncology at Magna Græcia University, Catanzaro, Italy in 2017. Afterward, he joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a research fellow and then instructor and lead scientist.
His long-term research interest is to decode the key oncogenic features of noncoding RNAs to unlock their therapeutic potential, with a focus on blood cancers, particularly multiple myeloma. As such, he has deeply investigated the roles of noncoding RNAs in promoting multiple myeloma and pioneered innovative strategies for their targeting, with translation to clinical trials.
Morelli is well-published in the field and received national and international grants from different agencies, including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the American Society of Hematology, the International Myeloma Foundation, and the European Hematology Association. In 2019 and 2021, he received the Young Investigator Award from the International Myeloma Society for his contribution to translational research in myeloma.
Guido
Ghilardi
FINALIST
University of Pennsylvania
Guido Ghilardi is an Italian physician-scientist who graduated from the Univerista’ del Piemonte Orientale (Novara, Italy) and trained as a hematologist at the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland, a world-renowned center for the treatment of lymphomas, interested in adoptive immunotherapy, such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CART) immunotherapy. To study the mechanisms underlying resistance and toxicities of CART immunotherapy, Guido joined the Ruella’s laboratory at the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, where he works as a 4th year post-doctoral researcher.
The focus of Guido’s research is to improve CART immunotherapy in non-Hodgkin lymphomas by studying the causes of resistance and the mechanisms underlying CART toxicities to design innovative and safer therapeutic approaches. Guido’s main focus is studying how different lymphodepletion regimens are able to generate different cytokine and metabolite environments by the time of CART infusion, and how these modifications contribute to the emergence of toxicities and ultimately propose safer lymphodepletion regimens. Moreover, Guido is evaluating new approaches to overcome resistance to CART immunotherapy by designing a new optimized dual CART product able to prevent the emergence of antigen-negative escape.
Elisa
Mandato
FINALIST
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
I received my bachelor’s and master’s degree in Molecular Biology and Medical Biology, respectively, and completed my PhD in Onco-Hematology at the University of Padova, Italy. I joined the Medical Oncology Department at Dana-Farber Cancer institute (DFCI) in Boston, MA, to complete my postdoctoral training in the Division of Hematologic Neoplasia, Shipp lab. Last year, I joined the junior faculty at DFCI and Harvard Medical School as an Instructor in Medicine. My research interests include the investigation of mechanisms of immune escape and aberrant signaling pathways in aggressive B-cell lymphomas. My studies focus on identifying novel targetable vulnerabilities to increase the response to therapy in diffuse large B-cell lymphomas, using the recently developed genetic framework and considering the concurrent alterations in clinically relevant disease subsets. My postdoctoral research was funded by a Grant from the Lymphoma Research Foundation. I have a record of productive research studies published in international peer-reviewed journals, including Blood and Frontiers in Immunology. Additionally, I have presented my work in several international venues including the American Society of Hematology annual meeting and the American Association for Cancer Research meeting on Advances in Malignant Lymphoma.
RnB4CULTURE AWARD
FOR INNOVATION IN THE STUDY OF ITALIAN CULTURE
Filippo
Gianferrari
WINNER EX EQUO
UC Santa Cruz
Filippo Gianferrari is Assistant Professor of Literature at The University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a trained medievalist with a particular interest on the history of education and literacy in the pre-modern West and its impact on the political and social lives of Italian city-states. Gianferrari is originally from Modena, Italy, graduated from the University of Bologna and received a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame. Before working at UCSC, he taught at Vassar College and Smith College.
Angelica
Pesarini
WINNER EX EQUO
University of Toronto
Angelica Pesarini is an Assistant Professor in Race and Cultural Studies/Race and Diaspora and Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. After obtaining a PhD in Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Leeds, she worked at Lancaster University and at NYU Florence, where she designed and taught the course "Black Italia". Her work focuses on dynamics of race, gender, identity, and citizenship in colonial and (post)colonial Italy. On this topic, she is currently writing a monograph on the lived experience of Black "mixed race” Italian women born during Italian colonialism in East Africa, and the use of oral sources as forms of counter-narratives. She is interested in the racialization of the political discourse on immigration in Europe, and with The Black Mediterranean Collective, of which she is a founding member, she co-edited "The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Angelica is the author of a short semi-fictional story published in "Future. Il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi" (Future. Tomorrow narrated by today’s voices, 2019), the first anthology written by eleven Italian women of African descent. She also co-translated into Italian "Undercommons. Fugitive Planning and Black Study" (Moten and Harney), and "Blues Legacies and Black feminism" by Angela Y. Davis. As a scholar activist, she is engaged in the Italian anti-racist movement and collaborates with grass-roots organizations focusing on social justice and human rights.
Giancarlo
Tursi
FINALIST
UC Santa Barbara
I am Assistant Professor of Translation Studies and Translation Theory in the French and Italian department at the University of California Santa Barbara. I earned my PhD in Comparative Literature from NYU in 2022 and my Masters, also in Comparative Literature, from the Sorbonne Nouvelle in 2015. My doctoral dissertation, entitled “Dialectal Dante: The Politics of Translation in Risorgimento Italy,” explored the phenomenon of dialectal translations of Dante's Divine Comedy in nineteenth-century, unification-era Italy, drawing on archival research conducted in the National Library of Florence. I am currently at work in turning this dissertation into a book. A comparatist by training, I work across the languages I was either raised with or have acquired: Italian, French, and Spanish. I also speak my native Italian dialect of Martinese, a branch of the Neapolitan language family, which allows me to work with a number of other Italian dialects. I have recently started learning the Mayan language of Kaqchikel, a branch of the Mam-Quichean family, spoken by roughly 400,000 people in Central Guatemala. My articles have been published by La Fusta, The King’s Review, and La Società Editrice Fiorentina.