ICTP'S TRIL programme teams with Italian universities and research centres to help scientists from the developing world gain valuable research skills. Cuba is a case in point.

Gulfs, Bays and Science

One region lies within the Mediterranean basin; the other within the Caribbean. European settlement in the former dates back more than 5000 years; in the latter just 500.
Yet for all these vast differences in location and history, the Gulf of La Spezia in northwest Italy and the Bay of Cienfuegos in south-central Cuba are both coastal ecosystems--places where the sea relentlessly washes onto the land to create a common set of 'eco-opportunities' and 'eco-challenges.'
This shared ecology is precisely what has made the agreement between the Italian Commission for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment's Marine Environment Research Centre (ENEA-MERC) and ICTP's Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) programme so productive. It has enabled Carlos Alonso Hernandez, director, Environmental Research Centre, Cienfuegos, Cuba, to sharpen the considerable analytical skills he acquired while earning a degree in physics at Instituto Superior de Ciencias y Tecnologias Nucleares, Havana, Cuba, in 1988, and then to apply these skills to real-world environmental problems related to sedimentation and marine pollution in the Bay of Cienfuegos.
"Before ICTP gave me an opportunity to work at ENEA-MERC, I did not have access to the modelling tools that I needed to transform my academic knowledge into practical problem-solving strategies," notes Alonso Hernandez. "Now, with the environmental data and trends that have been uncovered by our research, regional policy makers in Cuba can base their decisions on much more reliable scientific information and analyses."

Carlos Alonso Hernandez

"Cienfuegos' economy has always been resource-based," explains Alonso Hernandez. "In the past, this meant a great deal of reliance on fishing, agriculture and maritime transport, three economic sectors that remain central to the region's well-being today." But a fourth economic force--tourism--has recently come into play. In fact, as Alonso Hernandez notes, "the increasing number of Canadian and European vacationers coming to the Bay of Cienfuegos to enjoy our beautiful beaches, inviting climate and low prices has made international tourism the region's largest source of revenue." As a result, the ecosystem's health is not just an environmental issue but an economic issue as well.
With the help of his colleagues at ENEA-MERC in La Spezia, Alonso Hernandez and his Cuban research team have developed a detailed profile of an ecological trend that local residents and government officials sensed already existed: a rapid buildup of sedimentation in the bay. Indeed Alonso Hernandez's investigation indicated that the amount of sediment in the Bay of Cienfuegos has doubled over the past 50 years, causing a decrease in the fish population, a loss of biodiversity, and disruptions in boating and maritime transport. "If the current rate of sedimentation continues," Alonso Hernandez notes, "both the bay's physical appearance and water quality will deteriorate, having an adverse impact on three staples of the region's economy: tourism, transport and fishing."
Through such analytical instruments and techniques as X-ray diffraction and radionuclide measurements, supplied by ENEA-MERC, Alonso Hernandez also determined that much of the sediment being channelled into the bay has come from northern rivers. These rivers wind through an area that has experienced widespread deforestation over the past 20 years largely due to the clearing of land for agricultural development and housing.
"Our research shows that rapid changes in land use were responsible for the problem," he notes. The findings of Alonso Hernandez and his colleague Misael Diaz, who has also conducted research at ENEA-MERC, earned them a prize from the Cuban government at the Ninth National Cuban Exposition, "Forging the Future," held earlier this year in Havana. More importantly, their findings have left a mark on regional land-use plans that now call for a curtailment of agricultural development and the creation of a systematic programme for reforestation.
Alonso Hernandez's journey from an academic researcher to centre director began in 1997 after he met Roberta Delfanti, research scientist, ENEA-MERC, at a conference in Greece. As Delfanti remembers it, "Carlos told me about both his research interests and the kind of training and equipment that he would need to do a better job. I suggested that he get in touch with officials from ICTP who might be able to help him."
Alonso Hernandez quickly decided to apply to ICTP's TRIL programme and was accepted as a fellow in 1998. The TRIL programme places promising young researchers from developing countries in Italian laboratories for one-year appointments to pursue applied research projects that are helpful both to them and the institutions in which they work. Since its inception in 1983, some 875 researchers from 70 countries in the South have been appointed fellows. More than 300 Italian institutions--among them, leading universities and research centres--have participated in the programme.
"Carlos' work at ENEA-MERC," says Carlo Papucci, research scientist at the Marine Centre who has been Carlos' advisor during his visits to Italy, "has influenced environmental and land-use policies in his home country. Staff at the centre in La Spezia are proud of the contribution that we have made to these overall research efforts."

Carlo Papucci and Carlos Alonso Hernandez

"But it's also important to note that we have benefited from Carlos' presence as well. His focus on the ecological challenges facing the Bay of Cienfuegos has enabled us to apply our models and broad analytical strategies to a far-away ecosystem that shares many characteristics with the gulf just outside our offices here in Italy. That, in turn, has given us new purpose and focus, which has not only reinvigorated our research programme but also extended the reach of our knowledge into a global setting where most ecological problems reside."
"Carlos' experience offers an excellent case study exemplifying the overall goals that TRIL hopes to fulfill," adds Giuseppe Furlan, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Trieste, who has been the head of the TRIL programme since its inception and a collaborator with ICTP since 1964.
"The programme is designed to help researchers from the developing world enhance their skills and advance their careers while providing Italian research laboratories with well-trained personnel who lend a hand in pushing the institution's agenda ahead. TRIL's success can be measured not just in the increasing number of developing world and Italian researchers who have worked together, but in the concrete contributions that they have made to addressing a host of scientific and technological issues related to physics, chemistry, environment, optics and other fields that are covered under the programme."
Both Alonso Hernandez and Papucci hope that their collaboration will continue--and, in fact, broaden--in the future. Alonso Hernandez returned home to Cuba this August, but he has recently been appointed as TRIL Associate. The TRIL Associates programme, which promotes long-term interaction between Italian universities and research institutes and those in the developing world through funding mechanisms that allow researchers like Alonso Hernandez to return to their host Italian institutions three times over a six-year period.
As an Associate, Alonso Hernandez anticipates coming back to ENEA-MERC sometime in 2002. Meanwhile, he and Papucci have submitted a proposal to ICTP and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to hold a workshop on the modelling of marine processes that they hope will attract scientists from across the Caribbean.
"Our goal," says Alonso Hernandez, "is to enable scientists throughout the region to learn about the analytical tools that have proven so useful in our work. Countries in the Caribbean depend largely on tourism, fishing and maritime transport for their economic well-being. With proper training and access to the right instruments and equipment, scientists could play a key role in helping to boost the Caribbean's economy in ways that preserve and protect the long-term health of the region's rich and attractive environment."

THE NEW TRIL ASSOCIATES
The success of the ICTP Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) programme has been accompanied by one common concern: How can ICTP devise a strategy for sustaining collaboration among the scientists and scientific institutions once the year-long TRIL fellowship is completed and make the TRIL fellowship not just an important experience in the life of a single researcher but a source of long-standing collaboration between research groups and institutions? The answer has come in the creation of the TRIL Associate programme, which was launched in 1999 but remained largely dormant until this year when an infusion of funds led to the appointment of an additional 10 TRIL Associates beyond the 5 previous appointments. These associates--hailing, for example, from Argentina, Bulgaria, China, Morocco and Nigeria--will be able to collaborate with Italian institutions for an additional six-year period ensuring that the partnerships forged under the TRIL Fellowship programme become lasting ones.

For additional information about the TRIL programme, please contact itlabs@ictp.trieste.it; phone: + 39 040 2240 553 or 556; fax: + 39 040 2240 558, or see www.ictp.it.

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