A Life of Lasers...
and More at ICTP

A fleeting moment: that's how I view my 10 years at ICTP's Office of External Activities (OEA).

I first became acquainted with the ICTP as a student in the mid 1960s just a few months after Abdus Salam had launched the Centre. Like so many others, I found it a wonderful and stimulating experience to discuss my research with scientists from around the world.

Then, some 20 years later during ICTP's unprecedented years of expansion in the early 1980s, I worked closely with Giuseppe Furlan on the creation of the Programme for Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) and with Mohamed Hassan on the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS).

In 1988, my involvement with the ICTP increased substantially when I became the head of the OEA. The position offered me a unique opportunity to broaden the Centre's wide-ranging scientific and humanistic activities largely through cooperative initiatives with a global network of scientists.

I'd like to mention two examples. A group of physicists from Asia working on metal alloys met at an ICTP workshop. They subsequently sought to pursue their common interests and submitted a joint proposal to the OEA for the creation of a network. Like many others, this cooperative effort was conceived at the ICTP and owes its success to the fruitful interaction of OEA programmes with other Centre activities.

In a similar vein, in sub-Saharan Africa, there's a system of ICTP affiliated centres carrying out joint research programs in optics and lasers. That systems would not exist without the helping hand lent by the Centre.

Closer to home, in 1985, I became the local organizer for ICTP's colleges and courses on lasers and optics. That led to the creation of a laboratory focusing on lasers and optical fibres in 1990.

The laboratory, which has matured over time, moved last year to the Synchrotron Radiation facility, which is located on the Carso about 10 kilometres from the Centre. There, researchers-largely from the ICTP-interact with other scientists working on similar research problems. This will allow the ICTP's original laser and optics network to evolve into a larger sphere of activity.

Now, after more than a decade at the ICTP, I've returned to the University of Trieste to resume my duties as physics professor on a full-time basis.

As I begin a new phase of my life, I'm confident that the sense of international and cultural cooperation that has been the hallmark of the ICTP since its inception will continue to shape my work. And I remain ready to help the Centre in any way that I can.

Gallieno Denardo

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