Young Italian scientists and researchers in North America

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December 12, 2021The flight of young Italian scientists, researchers and technologists in search of "luck" does not stop. 

The Aire (the registry of Italians abroad) photographs a migratory phenomenon, from 2006 to 2018, which brought Italians registered abroad from 3 million and 100 thousand to 5 million.

And they are mostly young and educated.

56% of the "expats", the expatriates, are between 18 and 44 years old.

And the level of education is higher than those who left in the past: 34.6% have a middle school certificate, 34.8% have a high school diploma and 30% have a degree.

And more and more associations and foundations are born abroad that try to be a support in the research of the doctorate or in the interviews with the companies. One of these is ISSNAF, the Foundation for Italian scientists and students in North America, founded in 2007 and which sees among the co-founders Pierluigi Zappacosta, a young Italian engineer who arrived in Silicon Valley in 1974 and who in 1981, together with Daniel Borel and Giacomo Marini , founded Logitech, a world leader in the production of computer peripherals, as a spin-off of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne. Borel and Zappacosta came from Stanford University while Marini had had experience at Olivetti.

The President of ISSNAF, Cinzia Zuffada, head of NASA's Propulsion Laboratories, gave Rainews.it an interview on the mission of the Foundation on the celebratory event

ISSNAF has on the board the Italian Embassy in the United States and the Ministry of University and Research and its motto is "Connecting, Empowering, Celebrating the Italian Intellectual Diaspora". The annual event took place online with the participation of the Minister for University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa and awarded a series of projects related to "global sustainability".

Among the winners Silvio Micali of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and wave of Algorand as well as winner of the 'Nobel of computer science', the Turing Award, on the subject of cryptography.

Theme also of the work awarded by ISSNAF and of the relationship with blockchain.