The winners of two important prizes of the Italian Physical Society (Società italiana di Fisica - SIF) were awarded during the Opening Ceremony of the SIF 94th Congress in Genoa, Italy, on 22 September 2008.
R. Kirby-Harris, Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics (IOP), UK, announced that the joint SIF-IOP 2008 Giuseppe Occhialini Prize was awarded to Francesco Vissani, of the Gran Sasso Laboratory of INFN-Italy, "for his distinguished contributions to neutrino physics and, in particular, to the phenomenology and theory of neutrino mass and mixing". The Occhialini Prize and Medal was presented to Dr. Vissani at a special dinner of the IOP Council on 27 November.
Dr. Vissani obtained his PhD at SISSA in 1994. He was a postdoctoral fellow at ICTP in the High Energy Section where he collaborated with A. Smirnov until 1997; later, he started a collaboration with G. Senjanovic. Dr. Vissani has been a course director of high energy training activities since 2002.
Just after announcing Dr. Vissani's award, SIF jointly awarded its most prestigious prize, the Enrico Fermi Prize, to three scientists who have close association to ICTP: Professors Giulio Casati, Luigi Lugiato and Luciano Pietronero have all been speakers and course directors of many ICTP training activities in the fields of condensed matter physics and optics.